Pennsylvania ballots not accepted a week after Election Day

CLAIM: A Pennsylvania judge ruled that ballots received up until Nov. 14 will count in the 2022 midterm elections.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Pennsylvania ballots, including mail-in and absentee ballots, must be received by county election offices by 8 p.m. on Nov. 8 to be counted, according to the state’s Department of State. A court in the state recently decided a case related to Philadelphia’s ballot-counting procedure, but that had no bearing on statewide ballot deadlines.

THE FACTS: As voters went to the polls on Tuesday, misleading information about Pennsylvania’s vote-counting deadlines was picking up traction on social media.

“This just in: Pennsylvania Judge allows ballots to count that are received up until November 14th,” read the post. “This is unconstitutional.”

The message, shared in several Instagram posts, is a screenshot of a tweet that has since been deleted. The original tweeter acknowledged in a follow-up post that the information was incorrect.

Existing law requires that Pennsylvania voters’ ballots be received by county election workers by Nov. 8, the Department of State explains on its website. Unlike some other states, including California, Pennsylvania allots no extra time for mail-in ballots — what counts is the day the ballot actually made it to election officials, not when the ballot was postmarked.

The tweeter who first made the claim said in a follow-up post that the court case he was referring to was a recent decision by a Pennsylvania Common Pleas Court. However, the case in question has nothing to do with ballot submission deadlines.

Philadelphia uses a specific cross-checking procedure to prevent duplicate votes from being counted, said Kevin Feeley, spokesperson for the Philadelphia City Commissioners, which oversees elections in the city. The city had sought to delay that process until after the initial ballot count. Feeley said this was an effort to get ballots counted more quickly, and that no duplicate votes had been found in the last three elections.

The court granted the city the right to delay the reconciliation process, but the judge in the case was “highly critical” of the idea, Feeley said. So the City Commission opted Tuesday to revert to doing reconciliation as usual, regardless of the judge’s decision.

Feeley confirmed that the case did not mean voting can occur through Nov. 14.

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Associated Press writer Melissa Golden in New York contributed to this report.

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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.