PENNSYLVANIA, USA — It could take a few days to find out which party will control Congress, similar to what was seen in Pennsylvania in both 2020 & 2021.
Some races are expected to be close, and some states, including Pennsylvania, have already warned counting could take days to complete.
Here are a couple of factors that could delay results until later this week:
Each county follows its own plan for handling mail-in and absentee ballots
Some places started counting when the polls opened at 7:00 a.m. on Election Day.
On Election Day, ballots that are received by mail are brought into the counting room from a secure location, and reviewed to make sure that each voter has dated and signed the outer mailing envelope.
After polls close at 8:00 p.m., results from mail-in ballots that have been counted to that point will be reported alongside in-person votes.
However, depending on the county, some will only begin counting mail-in and in-person ballots when the polls close at 8:00 p.m.
Then, each inspector much sign and certify their precinct's number before heading to the county election office.
Legal challenges could delay results
Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman’s campaign went to court late Monday in a bid to have mail-in ballots that lack accurate handwritten dates on the exterior envelopes counted. Fetterman's legal action followed a state Supreme Court ruling that said the ballots could not be counted and another over the weekend clarifying what constituted an incorrect date.
Fetterman's campaign — in partnership with national congressional and senatorial Democratic campaign organizations and two voters — sued county boards of election across the state, arguing that throwing out ballots that lack proper envelope dates would violate a provision in the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act that says people can’t be kept from voting based on what the lawsuit calls “needless technical requirements.”
In Philadelphia, voters who had missing or incorrect dates on their mail-in ballots were being allowed to file replacement ballots at City Hall or vote provisionally at their regular precincts Tuesday.
It’s unclear how many ballots would be affected by the decision across the state, but thousands were flagged by election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh. The number of mail-in ballots is large enough that they might matter in a close race, such as the U.S. Senate contest between Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz.
The Philadelphia City Commissioners also voted in an emergency meeting early Tuesday to reinstate a process to reconcile the poll books while the count is happening, rather than waiting until after the count. The procedure has been used to weed out possible double votes in the past, but has not found any issues during the past three elections and is slower than reconciling after the count. The final ballots are likely to be counted Friday.
The vote came after a judge issued an order denying Republicans’ request for an injunction that would have forced the city to reinstate the process. But the judge’s opinion, which had admonished the city’s decision to remove the process, raised concerns for commissioners.
It's unclear how long the legal challenges could delay election results in Pennsylvania.