Here’s where things stand on ballot counting in key swing states
COUNTING #COUNTING
The presidential election has come down to a handful of states that are still counting votes in a tight race between President Trump and former vice president Joe Biden.
Here’s a rundown of the counting rules in the states that are proving pivotal in the election — and an update on how the process was going Wednesday morning.
Pennsylvania
State law in Pennsylvania prohibited any counting of absentee ballots until Tuesday morning, and a handful of counties said they would not begin the process until Wednesday.
Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said at a Wednesday morning news conference the election “could not have gone more smoothly,” but “millions of ballots” remained to be counted. She promised a “lot of updates” in the next couple of hours and throughout the day.
“We are going to accurately count every single ballot,” she said.
The GOP late Tuesday night had filed a lawsuit statewide alleging that Boockvar broke state law by advising county officials on Monday to help mail voters resolve errors detected during an initial check of their ballots.
Republicans alleged that county officials should not have started checking mail ballots until Election Day.
Boockvar said Tuesday night she “completely disputes” the allegation her office had broken the law, and was prepared to fight in court.
On Wednesday morning, she said, “I can’t talk about active litigation.”
Trump has taken aim at the state’s decision to allow absentee ballots postmarked by Tuesday, but received after Tuesday, to be counted.
Michigan
Like Pennsylvania, state law in Michigan prevents absentee ballot counting ahead of Election Day, but allowed local clerks a limited window to process mail ballots for a designated period of time.
The law said election clerks whose jurisdiction contains at least 25,000 people could start processing, but not counting, mail ballots for 10 hours on Nov. 2 — the day before Election Day.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Wednesday morning that there were “tens of thousands of ballots that still need to be counted and jurisdictions have been reporting throughout the morning.”
She said she hoped that an unofficial count would come within the next 24 hours, which would be followed by an official calculation that would take even more time.
“The information I have is that ballots are still being counted in our largest jurisdictions, including Detroit, Grand Rapids Flint, Kalamazoo, and numerous other Michigan cities and townships. Now these ballots were cast by tens of thousands of Michigan citizens who have the right to have their vote counted, and we’re going to make sure that right is protected,” she said.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin also has laws preventing the counting or processing of absentee ballots ahead of Election Day. Processing began for this battleground state when the polls opened Tuesday at 7 a.m.
According to Wisconsin Public Radio, poll workers have until 4 p.m. Wednesday to meet the deadline for counting non-provisional ballots.
Meagan Wolfe, the director of the state Elections Commission, said shortly after noon Wednesday that results had been reported from all 1,850 municipal clerks around the state, except for one tiny town of less than 300 voters.
While Biden holds a lead of around 20,000 votes in unofficial tallies, Wolfe emphasized that the results would now be checked at the county level, and the state would not make an official announcement of the results until Dec. 1, when they are certified at a meeting of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Georgia
In Georgia, processing ballots can start 15 days before Election Day, but votes cannot be counted until the polls close at 7 p.m. on Election Day.
Tuesday night, several major counties reported backups and sent workers home rather than finishing counting overnight.
Georgia ran into other issues too, as a pipe burst early Tuesday morning in a processing room for all absentee ballots (none were damaged), and a suspected problem with a voting tabulation software was suspected in Gwinnett County.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday afternoon that around 200,000 ballots had yet to be counted, and the state was pushing counties to get those tallied by the end of the day.
Nevada
Ballots in Nevada can undergo processing ahead of Election Day, and counting started on Oct. 19, according to CNBC.
On Tuesday, the counting of mail-in votes in populous Clark County stopped overnight and was slated to resume Wednesday at 11 a.m. Nevada elections officials said they would release the next batch of results on Thursday morning.
“The difference between Biden and Trump is close to 9,000 votes,” Wayne Thorley, deputy secretary of state for elections, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I don’t know the number of outstanding mail-in ballots, but we are in the tens of thousands range. It absolutely could change (results.)”
The Nevada Supreme Court recently rejected a bid by President Trump’s campaign to block the tallying of votes in Clark County. The suit argued that its poll watchers were being sidelined at ballot-counting sites and that an automated process the county is using to process ballots is unreliable.
Nevada’s highest court said the campaign’s case was too weak to justify an immediate blocking of the order.