Pennsylvania Secretary Of State says winner could be known Thursday

Pennsylvania Secretary Of State says winner could be known Thursday

By Barbara Sprunt/ NPR

November 5, 2020

Please be patient: We most likely won’t know the results of the Nov. 3 election in Pa. and across the country for several days. Click here for all of our election coverage and results as we get them.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar says that “overwhelmingly,” the majority of ballots in the commonwealth will be counted by Thursday.

“They’re coming in – we’re getting 10,000 here, 20,000 there,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper Thursday afternoon.

“Counties are furiously at work and it’s looking like we’re ahead of schedule,” she said.

When asked whether the winner of Pennsylvania could be known by the day’s end, Boockvar responded, “We definitely could.”

She said the remaining ballots are coming largely from the Philadelphia region, which Democrats argue will help boost Biden to a victory, and Allegheny County. (However, per court order, Alleghany County cannot begin to process almost 30,000 ballots until Friday.)

Boockvar echoed what she and Gov. Tom Wolf have been repeating to the public for days: What’s seen as a “delay” in the vote count is actually just democracy in action.

Unlike other states, Pennsylvania’s election workers cannot begin processing the record number of mail-in ballots received until Election Day itself.

“They got, you know, hundreds of thousands of ballots,” she said. “They’ve been doing this as quickly as they can but as you know, this takes time.”

As of Thursday afternoon Pennsylvania, and its highly-coveted 20 electoral votes, had 88% of the vote in, according to The Associated Press.

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