[ad_1]
The Philadelphia elections office is not expected to release further details of the count Friday night, as the remaining ballots are more difficult to sort.
The vote counting process has entered the most labor-intensive phase of the count, slowing the pace, according to a city official.
Philadelphia election officials are now working on the remainder of approximately 20,000 mail-in ballots that require review for a variety of issues such as signature issues or damage. There are also an estimated 15,000-20,000 interim ballots in person to pass. The fact that all of these ballots require a side glance and often a vote from a group of three election officials has considerably delayed the counting process.
Some context: The slowness of this phase is not exclusive to this election, this phase always takes longer after Election Day. What is unique is that there have never been so many mail-in ballots in the city and throughout the Commonwealth.
Mail ballot issues that require this additional review include: a voter not putting the date on their ballot, a voter indicating their date of birth where the current date must be included, a voter not putting their address on the ballot or signing the envelope side of the ballot.
All these ballots are separated into groups and then reviewed by the trio of election officials who vote on whether the ballot is valid or not.
Provisional ballots always take additional time as election officials must determine if the person is eligible to vote before they can count.
According to this source, all of these factors together make it difficult to accurately offer an estimate of how long it will take to complete all or part of this count.
