In final pre-poll briefing, Schmidt declares Pa. election will be 'free, fair, safe and secure'
Nov. 4—HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania's top election official, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, made two commitments to the public on the eve of Election Day.
"First, that Pennsylvania's Nov. 5 election will be free, fair, safe and secure. And second, that all registered voters will have the opportunity to make their voice heard," Schmidt said Monday in his eighth and final daily media briefing leading into the election.
Election Day is Tuesday. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Pennsylvania has a ballot full of important elections.
President, U.S. Senate and Congress are obvious with the balance of power in Washington at stake.
Lost, perhaps, on some voters are the state Senate and House elections further down ballot and how the collective outcome could tip the balance of power in Harrisburg and forecast the potential outcome of policy initiatives in the coming 2025-26 legislative session.
Pennsylvania has been centered in political discourse throughout the run-up to the general election, largely due to the presidential race and the commonwealth's 19 electoral votes — the most of any of the seven states considered battlegrounds in the 2024 contest.
With that attention has come myriad lawsuits concerning Pennsylvania's Election Code and the clouded and contested terms around universal mail-in voting.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, continues to sow doubt in the integrity of the vote, and many of his surrogates and other GOP candidates have followed suit.
The outcome of the presidential election in Pennsylvania is expected to be tight. National polling rates it as a toss-up. Because state law won't allow county election officials to process mail-in ballots until after polls open at 7 a.m. Tuesday, the unofficial count isn't expected to be completed on election night.
"Election officials can't even remove the ballot from the envelope and prepare them to be counted until then, which is the same time those officials will also be running more than 9,100 polling places across the commonwealth for in-person voting," Schmidt said.
As of Monday morning, voters returned 1,790,319 ballots by mail out of 2,197,915 approved ballot requests — 81.45%.
Mail-in ballots must be returned by the time polls close or they won't be counted. Schmidt said it's too late to drop them in the mail now. The postmark won't matter if ballots aren't in the possession of respective county election boards by 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Projected winners are traditionally declared on election night by media outlets like The Associated Press. County boards of election are tasked to tabulate the official count on the Friday after the election.
But military and overseas ballots will still trickle in through the Nov. 12 deadline. Those ballots coupled with thousands of provisional ballots expected to be cast across the commonwealth could potentially prove crucial depending on how tight the respective elections are.
Counties must certify election results by Nov. 25 under state law.
