Allegheny County Election Day results should be ready that night, leaders say
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Allegheny County leaders said they should know the county's election results by midnight. They believe the process should run smoothly and mail-in ballots should be counted faster.
In the 2020 presidential election, it was several days of waiting for those ballots to be counted. That shouldn't be the case this time around.
Right now, there are about 230,000 mail-in and absentee ballots that have been requested. So far, about 142,000 have been returned. The county said the majority of the requests and returns are from people registered as Democrats.
More than 200 people will have the ballots ready to scan throughout the day on Election Day. The hope is to have just about all the mail-in ballots counted by the time results drop at 8 that night. Including the day of voting, Allegheny County Elections Division Manager David Voye says the hope is to have all the results done by midnight. He said since 2020, they have been getting processes down pat, and feels counting everything should run well.
"We spend countless hours testing every piece of equipment before we send it out. We test every precinct scanner. We test our high-speed scanners at our warehouse. We scan a set of test ballots with a pre-determined vote total just to make sure that everything is working correctly, so when your ballot is cast, your ballot is cast and is counted correctly," Voye said.
He said many issues that have been a problem with mail-in ballots are being resolved this year. Some of that is from better education about how to do it correctly. As of now, a little more than 900 have been sent back to cure, which means there was something wrong with the dating, signature, or envelope.
