How is your vote counted in Pennsylvania? A look at election integrity in Philadelphia, surrounding counties
Pennsylvania is considered one of the most important battleground states in the upcoming presidential election. The state will be in the spotlight come Nov. 5 and possibly for days after, depending on how long it takes election workers to count ballots.
Four years ago, former President Donald Trump's "Stop the Steal" movement was birthed in Pennsylvania when the then-president spread misinformation about voter fraud. In reality, Trump's lead in Pennsylvania dwindled as its 67 counties worked around the clock to process millions of mail-in ballots.
State law does not allow Pennsylvania to count mail-in ballots before Election Day. Four days later, President Biden won Pennsylvania once all votes were counted.
Fast forward to today, CBS News Philadelphia is investigating election integrity in Pennsylvania. We're going behind the scenes in five Pennsylvania counties — Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia — to track how your vote is processed. Every county does it a little differently.
Delaware County expects more in-person voters, smoother process than in 2020
Delaware County's three dozen ballot drop boxes are now online and under constant watch and supervision. The county released nearly 60,000 absentee and mail-in ballots for the general election.
Jim Allen, the county's elections director, says the planning is over, and Delco is in action mode.
Allen, a former City Hall bureau chief for a Chicago newspaper, expects fewer mail-in ballots this year compared to 2020, meaning more voters at Delco's 428 polling locations for the presidential election than at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago.
"I don't think this is going to be anything like 2020," Allen said. "I think it's going to be far smoother, barring any unexpected circumstances."
Allen said recent elections give him confidence that 2024 will be different. He reported poll workers expressing satisfaction and said the county has more precincts coming in more smoothly and paperwork coming in more clearly. He described to CBS News Philadelphia the behind-the-scenes process of setting up polling locations, like jumpstarting hundreds of businesses.
"This is the weirdest business model in all of business because you have to open up hundreds of franchises with people who only work there two times a year," Allen said, "and make sure that everything goes smoothly according to any changes in the law and that all of the results are buttoned down within two hours, or something fishy is going on."
Delaware County declined our request for access to where its vote will be counted on election night, which is located inside an office complex on the waterfront in Chester.
Allen had a bullish prediction when Delaware County would complete its vote count. He believes the county will be done in hours, not days, after polls close.
"Hopefully, we're done early Wednesday morning," Allen said. "I can't promise we'll be done by Wednesday morning, but we want to have the lion's share of results in by the time the 11 o'clock news starts."
Allen dismissed questions about the integrity of the process, encouraging critics to get informed.
"If I could encourage voters, don't trust me. Talk with your neighbors who are the poll workers who are actually executing this work in your neighborhood," Allen said. "They're opening the doors and making sure you have the right to vote on Election Day. That's where the rubber meets the road, and we couldn't do it without them."
Philadelphia says it's more prepared for 2024 Election. Here's why.
An old bible-printing factory in Northeast Philadelphia will be the final stop for all of Philadelphia's ballots come Nov. 5. The massive warehouse will be the hub for the city's election results. City commissioners started leasing the building in 2021, making this November their first time at the location for a presidential election.
Officials in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia have been preparing for the upcoming presidential election since they finished counting the mail-in ballots in 2020. That process lasted about four days.
"It does take a lot of time to review, open, flatten and count hundreds of thousands of ballots," said City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, who's spent months inspecting and testing machines and procedures to ensure election night runs as efficiently as possible.
City commissioners don't expect as many mail-in ballots this year as they had in 2020. While the global pandemic likely influenced people's desire to vote from home, Commissioner Chair Omar Sabir believes fear and confusion are the main reasons people prefer the polls.
"A lot of that is from the misinformation and disinformation about mail-in voting," said Sabir, whose team has worked hard over the last four years to combat the false insecurity surrounding mail-in ballots.
"People have been told that vote by mail is not secure, that vote by mail is criminal. And we need to do better advertisement," Sabir added. "And that's why we're so blessed that we actually have more resources to do that."
Sabir wanted Philadelphians to have voting options, so the city opened several satellite offices around the city where people could request a mail-in ballot, get one printed out and vote right on the spot.
Bluestein gave CBS News Philadelphia a tour of the enormous operation that begins at 7 a.m. on Election Day, when state law allows workers to start opening envelopes and processing mail-in ballots.
Philadelphia uses a combination of machines that assist with opening exterior envelopes and secrecy envelopes. At a meeting in October, commissioners debated whether they should use some of the machines, fearing it could damage ballots. Ultimately, they decided to use the machines.
Bluestein said that because the ballot is shorter and, therefore, thinner this election, it's unlikely the machine will cause damage.
Officials say they've upgraded machine software, expanded their staff and are more prepared for the vote-by-mail dump.
"If we don't know the result on Election Day, it's not a sign that there's something wrong," Bluestein said. "It is a sign of the staff continuing to do their job."
Sabir and Bluestein would not estimate when the hundreds of workers are expected to be finished counting ballots.
"We're going to count 24 hours a day, right? We're going to do it as fast as we can," Sabir said. "We're going to do it rapidly, accurately. We're going to do it with transparency."
"If we have 200,000 ballots returned to us for this election, each of those is inside a secrecy envelope, which is inside a return envelope, which means we will have 600,000 pieces of paper that all have to be touched by a person throughout the process," Bluestein said. "That takes a lot of time."
Ballots have already started pouring into the warehouse. One large machine sorts the envelopes into the proper district. Once they're sorted, they get stored in a locked cage where they are secured until workers can start pre-canvassing on Election Day.
The counting process is under video surveillance and livestreamed so anyone can watch. Police and private guards will be providing security at the warehouse.
If you are voting by mail, election officials across the area encourage you to go ahead and get that done. If you forgot to sign or date your outer envelope or you forgot the yellow secrecy sleeve, most counties try to alert you that there's a problem with your ballot, but the closer it gets to Election Day, the harder it is to track people down to fix them.
Philadelphia has a running list of people who mailed back ballots with errors. At the time of this article, there were roughly 1,500 names on the list.
If the Board of Elections has an e-mail address on file for someone with a flawed ballot, they will attempt to notify you via e-mail. Philadelphians who voted by mail can search their name on the list to ensure they don't have an issue with their ballot.
Montgomery County believes it'll take less than 36 hours to count the vote
Charlie Cerino has been a judge of elections in Upper Moreland Township, Montgomery County, for over 30 years — that's eight presidential elections.
"The process is pretty airtight. It's been improved to the point where it's easy to pull off and easy to conduct the election," Cerino said. "And I'm fairly confident the numbers at the end of the day are 100% accurate."
Montgomery County has seen a surge, like other places, with mail-in balloting. That means officials need to protect those ballots.
"Our drop boxes all have cameras, 24/7," Commissioner Neil Makhija said.
Makhija, the chair of the Board of Elections, says drop boxes across the country allow voters to drop off their ballots any time between now and Election Day.
Another option for voters includes a recently rolled-out mobile voting office. It's a truck that can be found around the county at fall festivals and other events.
"People were able to register to vote, request a mail-in ballot and submit it on the spot," Makhija said.
What it means come Election Day is that all of those thousands of mail-in ballots will amount to an onerous counting process that can't begin until polls open at 7 a.m. on Nov. 5.
Montgomery County's vote count happens inside a complex in Norristown. It's a process so safeguarded that the county wouldn't allow our camera to get a look inside.
"If we had just one day to start counting those mail-in ballots, we could have the results on election night, which would be ideal," Makhija said.
The commissioner expects the count to be finished by late Wednesday afternoon after Election Day. In 2020, the wait for mail-in ballots to be counted fueled questions about the integrity of the vote.
Officials quickly challenge questions about election integrity or security, whether you vote in person or by mail-in ballot.
"The responsibility I have as an elected official is to make sure I'm not going to be intimidated or threatened by those who want to cast out on this process," Makhija said, talking about allegations of a stolen election by election deniers in 2020.
"Some of those folks are very intentionally misrepresenting the facts of the law," Makhija added, "and that was recognized in 60 court decisions in 2020. There was no basis for widespread fraud."
Meanwhile, Montgomery County is making sure that is the story again in 2024.
For Cerino, his Election Day work will wrap up when he delivers sealed bags to the county, containing discs that record vote tabulations — part of a redundant system — along with the paper ballots, in case there are questions about the authenticity of election results.
"Satisfying. Because you're done after a 13-hour day, you're done," Cerino said of how he feels at the end of the day. "It is official. You sign an oath in the beginning that you will obey all the laws of Pennsylvania voting. Everybody who comes in is counting on us to do it right. And we do our best to do it right."
Bucks County preparing for a long night of counting ballots
Bucks County is considered a critical county in the commonwealth, and election officials are preparing for the spotlight and the workload. Election officials think there could be even more mail-in ballots than four years ago.
County Commissioner Bob Harvie, chair of the county's Board of Elections, says they're more prepared now than in 2020 to process tens of thousands of mail-in ballots.
"We know the eyes of a lot of states and, in some cases, the world, are on us to make sure we get things right," Harvie said.
Election officials will start counting mail-in ballots at 7 a.m. on Election Day. Harvie says they won't stop until they're finished. He wouldn't give an exact time for when he thinks officials will be done counting but did say, "It's going to be probably next to impossible for us to be done on the night of the election, or even maybe early morning after the election."
Ahead of Election Day, voters can send their mail-in ballots back to the county through the U.S. Postal Service or drop them off in one of the 11 ballot boxes around the county, which election officials say are all under 24-hour video surveillance.
A few weeks ago, Harvie showed us the locked room where the ballots are kept until Election Day.
A large machine election staff nicknamed "The Dragon" sorts the envelopes as they come in, but state law doesn't allow workers to open them until 7 a.m. on Election Day. That's when workers begin unstuffing, flattening ballots and feeding the machines.
Bucks County election workers created a video showcasing how mail-in ballots are counted accurately.
CBS News Philadelphia asked Harvie if Bucks County had any instances of voter fraud in the 2020 election. He recalled two incidents involving people who submitted ballots for a member of their family who had recently died just before the election. Harvie said state death records instantly flagged the ballots, and they were removed.
"They didn't count," Harvie said. "They weren't even opened."
There are more than 300 precincts across Bucks County for in-person voting. The voting machines are currently housed in a secure warehouse, each locked inside an individual cage. Each machine will be transported to a precinct the week before Election Day. Harvie says that none of the machines are connected to the internet at any time.
Election officials encourage those voting by mail to send back ballots sooner than later. It must be received by 8 p.m. on election night. You must put your ballot in the secrecy sleeve, then in the envelope and sign and date the outside. If you don't do those three things, you run the risk of your vote not counting.
How Chester County's counting process creates transparency
Jay Schneider is a retired Chester County man who became a judge of elections for his Caln Township voting location a couple of years ago. He says Election Day is long, with a 5 a.m. wakeup and a Wawa visit for a gallon of coffee and doughnuts before heading to the township building to set up voting stations.
In all, it's almost 15 days from start to finish. By the day's end, Schneider turns over a neon-colored canvas pouch that contains media drives to election officials. That happens at what's known as Central Count in downtown West Chester.
"It's just relief that you're done," Schneider said. "You're tired, just go home and relax."
Weeks before Election Day, a non-descript room with shelves deep inside the Chester County Government Services Center is stocked with supplies for every polling location.
"We have 230 precincts," Karen Barsoum, director of voters services for Chester County, said, "and all have similar items."
Some of Barsoum's colleagues wondered when this wife and mother of two ever slept. Her words to describe her work in the run-up to an election are "steady" and "busy." She says there's nothing slow about it. She was on the phone with The New York Times before our interview, and her staff was a part of 60 Minutes in October.
For questions about the integrity of the vote, Barsoum points to Chester County's open-book approach to counting the vote, including live feeds and allowing the press to observe. That happened in 2020 when CBS News Philadelphia could report vote count updates in real time.
"We are educating, we are very transparent. We are encouraging people to learn the process," Barsoum said. "To know how those processes are being maintained and what is being done to make sure the election is safe and secure, and that the machines being deployed are 100% tested."
Like other counties outside Philadelphia, Chester County hopes to complete its vote count by late Wednesday, Nov. 6. People like Jay Schneider say that after observing the process, he had no questions about integrity.
"The process is, it's impossible for anyone to mess around with that because the public has access to the actual facility as it's going on," Schneider said. "They can just watch as it's going on."
