Election night results might be thing of past

It is quite possible that the 2020 election cycle will be the most intense and chaotic that we have ever seen.

First of all, it is a presidential year, and with it comes a titanic struggle by incumbent Republican Donald Trump to keep the office for another four years. Democrats, of course, have other ideas and have pledged to get behind their candidate, even though we will not know who it is for possibly several months yet.

On top of the interest in this election, which will also feature all congressional races, contests for all of the state House of Representatives and half of the seats in the state Senate, will come dramatic new voting rules which take effect for the first time in the April 28 primaries.

The most major change will permit any qualified voter to cast his or her ballot by mail without an excuse.

So, the burning question is: With the expected inundation of mailed-in ballots, how will county election officials cope, and will we know the winners either election night or early the next morning, as we do now?

The answer is: Maybe.

It’s up to each county to decide how to handle the election count. As of now, some local counties, such as Carbon and Northampton, are planning to increase staffing and add high-speed scanners to ensure that results are known sooner, not later.

In other counties, though, such as Lehigh and Monroe, election officials are not planning to count these votes until the official canvass begins a few days later.

“I don’t know if I want to open that can of worms on election night just because of how crazy it is,” said Tim Benyo, chief clerk for the Lehigh County Election Bureau. In Schuylkill County, no decision has yet been made.

In a statewide survey done by The Philadelphia Inquirer, other counties also plan to wait until the dust settles. For example, Bucks County in eastern Pennsylvania, Lycoming County in north-central Pennsylvania and Westmoreland County in the western part of the state are among a number of others which plan to wait a few days.

Since this is the first election with the new regulations in place, local election officials aren’t sure what to expect, but most believe it will be a challenge to their resources.

“We had 3,000 absentee ballots last presidential election (in 2016),” Carbon County’s Director of Elections/Voter Registration Lisa Dart told me. “This year, we might get 10,000 to 15,000 mail-in votes,” she predicted.

Her unscientific survey showed that most voters do not even know about the new rules, but she suspects that once they do, many will opt to mail in their ballots. Another provision of the mail-in ballot is that voters can check a box to allow them to vote by mail for every succeeding election, too.

Dart said that in previous presidential elections, her office hired two additional clerks. This year, she said, the office will hire a “handful” of clerks along with two part-timers to handle the expected three-to-five times additional mail-in count. The county also has purchased an additional high-speed scanner.

Frannie Brennan, director of the Schuylkill County Elections Bureau, told me that “everything is up in the air at the moment.’’ She added: “I would like to have everything wrapped up on election night, but it’s too early to tell.” Schuylkill County is the last local county to get new voting machines, which are scheduled to arrive in the next few days and be used for the first time in the primaries.

Pennsylvania’s results have important national implications in what is probably going to be another close presidential race. The state is expected to be one of the critical swing states just as it was in 2016 when Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by just 44,292 votes to win all 20 of the state’s electoral votes.

Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, whose department oversees elections, said counties need to adjust their personnel, purchase new equipment and modify current procedures to get away from a “we always have done it this way” mindset.

Her office has sent out some suggestions on how to handle the expected additional workload. Boockvar noted the state is reimbursing counties for about 60% of the cost of election equipment. “I’d be surprised if the huge majority of counties did not do counting that night, and, yes, we absolutely would urge them to do so.”

“There’s no possible way we would ever be able to do it on election night,” said Sara May-Silfee, Monroe County’s elections director. “I don’t even know why she thinks we would be able to do that. Obviously, she’s never worked in an election office on election night.”

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com