State Secretary Kathy Boockvar: Pa. In The 'Homestretch' But Hundreds Of Thousands Uncounted Ballots Remain
HARRISBURG, Pa. (KDKA) — Pennsylvania Secretary Of State Kathy Boockvar said Thursday evening we're in the "homestretch" when it comes to counting the state's millions of ballots.
At an evening press conference, she stopped short of saying we'll have a final count today. Earlier on CNN, she said we'll have the "overwhelming majority" of ballots counted by Thursday.
"They're coming in — we're getting 10,000 here, 20,000 here. Counties are furiously at work and it's looking like we're ahead of schedule," Boockvar told CNN on Thursday. "I've been saying that we'll have the overwhelming majority counted by tomorrow, but it's looking like we'll have the overwhelming majority counted by today."
At the press conference, Boockvar said the count is going faster than expected and gave praise to workers in Pennsylvania's 67 counties.
As for when we'll get a final count, she said "stay tuned."
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Common Cause Pennsylvania, a non-partisan watchdog group, is also keeping an eye on things. Though the group is not directly watching the counting process, interim executive director Suzanne Almeida says they've seen no evidence of fraud.
"The staff that are processing the ballots are really doing so with a lot of integrity. They're taking the steps they're following the law," Almedia said.
Boockvar also responded to critics who revealed a partisan tweet she posted. She says that was four years ago before she became the Secretary of State. She says partisan politics has no place in her office.
Allegheny County, the second-largest county in Pennsylvania, finished tallying the most of its mail-in ballots on Wednesday night before 10:30 p.m.
The Allegheny County Elections Division manager David Voye says they have scanned approximately 668,000 ballots in the past two days. That number included 313,000 mail-in ballots and 340,000 in-person ballots.
However, there are still more votes to go.
Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald says there's approximately 35,000 mail-in ballots that need to be looked at. Out of those, about 29,000 ballots have been ordered by federal court to not be handled or processed until 5 p.m. Friday. These 29,000 ballots were originally sent out by the county's third-party mailing company with the wrong information.
