Wisconsin and Pennsylvania May Take Longer to Count Ballots: Here’s Why

While Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are considered key battleground states for Tuesday’s General Election, both may take longer to count mail-in ballots because of state laws. Election officials cannot open or count mail ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day in either state. About 40 states allow for the preprocessing of mail ballots, including opening the envelope and removing the ballot in some cases. In Pennsylvania, the release of mail voting results cannot even begin until after polls have closed at 8 p.m. ET. Because of the overall volume of mail ballots—they comprised almost a quarter of Pennsylvania’s total vote in the 2022 midterm elections—and the varying amounts of time it takes the state’s 67 counties to tally these votes, determining a winner in a highly competitive race could take several days, as it did in the 2020 presidential election....