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Election officials in some states ended the night and planned to resume counting in the morning, while some Pennsylvania counties didn’t even begin tabulating their mail-in votes until Wednesday morning. Mail-in ballots, which broke records this year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, are expected to favor Biden, whose campaign encouraged Democrats to vote early, while in-person voting on Election Day may have given him an advantage to Trump.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly called for the results to be tallied quickly so that a winner can be declared on election night, although officials technically have days or weeks to complete official counts before state totals are certified. But in three key states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – election officials weren’t allowed to begin processing absentee ballots until or just before Election Day, after Republican-led state legislatures objected. successfully change the laws to allow earlier preparations like other states.
When Biden made comments early Wednesday morning asking for patience as workers continued to count, Trump falsely tweeted that Democrats were “trying to STEAL the election,” even though the count delay was expected. Twitter quickly tagged the tweet, saying it was “disputed and could be misleading.”
In Pennsylvania, where officials were unable to begin processing hundreds of thousands of ballots before Tuesday, counties made their own decisions about how to prioritize infatuation.
In Philadelphia, about 75,000 mail-in ballots were counted out of the 350,000 that had been returned Tuesday night, and another portion is expected to be counted before officials stop for the night, said city commissioner Al Schmidt. Poll workers in Luzerne County, a northeastern county near Scranton, stopped counting mail-in ballots on Tuesday night and will resume on Wednesday morning, according to county administrator David Pedri. He said the county had counted about 26,000 mail-in ballots out of about 60,000 issued.
Montgomery County, northwest of Philadelphia, planned to count “24 hours a day until completion,” according to county spokeswoman Kelly Cofrancisco.
In Georgia, where the rules allowed pre-processing, major counties reported backups and sent workers home rather than finish counting overnight.
By 10:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, Fulton, which is the largest county in the state and includes Atlanta, had counted all the votes in person and stopped counting the mail-in ballots that night. Officials plan to resume counting absentee votes at 8 a.m. Wednesday morning, Fulton County spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt told CNN Tuesday night.
As of Tuesday night, 86,000 absentee votes had been tallied, according to Corbitt. According to data from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Fulton County had approximately 134,000 outstanding absentee ballots in the mail by Election Day, leaving at least 48,000 to count.
Georgia ran into other problems as well. A pipeline burst early Tuesday morning at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena above the all absentee ballot processing room in Fulton County, delaying the count there, county spokeswoman Regina Waller said. No ballot was damaged, according to Waller.
An alleged problem with the voting tabulation software has caused delays in the counting of up to 80,000 mail-in ballots in Gwinnett County, which is east of Atlanta, according to a county spokesperson. Officials believe the software misidentified flaws in the way voters filled out ballots.
Legal fights are coming
Mail ballots could also be the source of post-election legal disputes. Republicans filed a lawsuit challenging at least 1,200 absentee ballots in Democratic-leaning Montgomery County outside of Philadelphia. A federal judge will hear the challenge Wednesday morning.
Three Republicans who observed mail ballot processing described to a federal court how they viewed absentee ballots with potential technical problems and believed that election officials might impermissibly try to give voters a chance to fix problem ballots that would have provoked his rejection. Republicans alleged the county had started processing mail ballots too early and was illegally trying to allow voters to correct defects, such as adding missing inner envelopes.
Also in Pennsylvania, Republican Rep. Mike Kelly and others filed a lawsuit in state court Tuesday night accusing the Pennsylvania secretary of state of illegally warning that provisional ballots could be offered to absentee voters whose ballots would be rejected.
Officials in states where ballots were still pending urged patience while the results are calculated. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, posted a video Tuesday night warning voters to “stay calm” as the vote count continues.
“Across the state, dedicated county workers stand ready to tirelessly ensure that everyone’s vote counts,” Wolf said.
In Milwaukee, absentee votes were counted at a central facility, and county elections director Julietta Henry predicted they would end around 5 a.m. Wednesday, according to a spokesperson. “It is not in any way, shape or form unusual for jurisdictions to keep counting until morning,” said Meagan Wolfe, the top elections official for the state of Wisconsin.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who suggested in the weeks leading up to the election that the count could go until Friday, predicted to reporters Tuesday night that the state could “potentially see a full result from each tabulation. Michigan in the next 24 hours. “The pace in Detroit, where 120,000 absentee votes had already been counted as of Tuesday night, underscored that the state is on track to finish the tally of results earlier than expected, Benson said.
Detroit Assistant Secretary Andre Gilbert told CNN that the city, Wayne County’s largest, will have unofficial results “probably early in the morning,” with voting day ending soon and absentee ballots taking longer. . According to the latest official report from the city clerk, approximately 92,000 absentee ballots remain to be counted.
Technological problems in various states
Several states had other emerging problems that led to ballot counting delays. In Outagamie County, Wisconsin, which is located on the outskirts of Green Bay, poll workers were working Tuesday to transfer votes from about 13,500 misprinted absentee ballots to clean ballots that will not jam the electronic tabulating machine, said the county clerk to CNN.
In South Carolina, a printing error delayed the counting of 14,600 absentee ballots by mail in Dorchester County, north of Charleston, until later in the week, state election officials said. The marks at the top of ballots that alert the scanner to begin tabulating votes are too small for the scanner to read, said Todd Billman, Dorchester County Elections executive director.
Election officials released a statement Tuesday night saying they plan to scan the ballots again beginning Wednesday morning. If that doesn’t work, Billman told CNN, a poll worker may have to manually duplicate each vote using a touchscreen voting machine, with a witness watching the process.
An internet shutdown occurred Tuesday in Osceola County, central Florida, and the ballots were taken to the county elections office for scrutiny, county commissioner Brandon Arrington said. Arrington said he wasn’t sure how much delay this would cause or how many ballots would be affected. Osceola includes the city of Kissimmee, south of Orlando.
While election officials raised concerns about the challenges of voting during a pandemic, battlefield states reported that voting at polling places was mostly fluid, with only isolated incidents. Michigan Secretary of State Benson said Tuesday that “the precincts are islands of calm,” while a spokesman for the Supervisor of Elections for Broward County in Florida said the day was “boring.”
CNN Katelyn Polantz, Nick Valencia, Jason Morris, Caroline Kenny, Bill Weir, Annie Grayer, Kelly Mena, Sara Murray, Casey Tolan, Meredith Edwards, Curt Devine, Scott Bronstein, Rob Kuznia.
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