Precanvassing bill faces shaky future in Senate
By Sarah Pellis
spellis@yourmvi.com
A bill to help manage huge influxes of mail-in ballots narrowly passed the state House Wednesday, but it faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
By a 102-99 margin, the House gave its approval to “precanvassing” which permits county election workers to begin processing ballots up to seven days before Election Day.
Democrats overwhelmingly supported the bill, while Republicans warned that it would open the door to fraud. Gov. Josh Shapiro issued a statement ...
By Sarah Pellis
spellis@yourmvi.com
A bill to help manage huge influxes of mail-in ballots narrowly passed the state House Wednesday, but it faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
By a 102-99 margin, the House gave its approval to “precanvassing” which permits county election workers to begin processing ballots up to seven days before Election Day.
Democrats overwhelmingly supported the bill, while Republicans warned that it would open the door to fraud. Gov. Josh Shapiro issued a statement Wednesday urging the Senate to pass it.
Counties have sought a precanvassing provision for years, even before 2020’s presidential election, to give them more time to process mail-in ballots and avoid a drawn-out post-election count.
Currently, Pennsylvania doesn’t let counties begin to process mail-in ballots before Election Day.
The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania backed the bill, according to State Rep. Scott Conklin, D-State College, a former county commissioner who introduced it.
He said the bill would help poll workers manage the workload and ensure quicker results.
“All the fake information as you know counties will count the early ballots a day or two afterwards so they know the election was stolen,” Conklin said. “We must be precanvassing first. I am a true blue former county commissioner who believes in the elected process, who ran elections for years and knows and understands full well how canvassing can help the counties.”
Although the bill allows mail-in ballots to be counted a week ahead of time, nobody will know the results until 8 p.m. on election night, according to Conklin.
Conklin said the bill gives the people that run the elections exactly what they asked for because he said they are “so tired” of their poll workers being yelled at and being told they stole the election.
“As a lot of folks in politics use those conspiracy theories to run for reelection and raise money,” Conklin said. “If they won the election, it was pretty much on party lines, which disappointed me immensely since most Republican and Democrat county commissioners all endorse the bill. Still, that’s politics.”
Conklin said misinformation about the election comes from somebody who doesn’t understand the election situation or process.
“There is no widespread fraud and because somebody didn’t win, they came up with this theory that the election was stolen,” he said. “The reason why they were able to build on the election being stolen is because all 67 counties control the election process. So all 67 counties have a different way of doing the election.”
County commissioners asked to open ballots early because they are having trouble keeping people to work at the polls, Conklin said. Poll workers are quitting and getting tired of explaining that everything is being accounted for.
“Basically, what they want to be able to do is stop elected officials that know better from using this and saying ‘Hey, the election was stolen by the Democrats that won,’” Conklin said. “We embraced early voting; my colleagues said don’t early vote. Same vote, same person.
“As an elected official, having your poll workers get yelled at about doing something they aren’t doing and saying they are cheating is the worst thing ever because these folks don’t get paid anything to be there all day long. That’s why they wanted it. That’s why they got it through the House. I was very disappointed that people who knew better said no to it.”
Lisa Schaefer, the county commissioners association’s executive director, asked the Senate to quickly advance the bill to Shapiro so it can be implemented for November’s general election.
“This simple change would significantly improve election administration without compromising ballot security,” Schaefer said in a statement.
Senate GOP Majority Leader Joe Pittman insisted that Pennsylvania must toughen voter identification requirements as a companion to any legislation on election administration — a demand Republicans have made since 2021.
Republicans have repeatedly gone to court since then to try to invalidate Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law.
State Representative Eric Davanzo, R-Smithton, said none of the counties he represents are asking for more time to process election results.
“What was passed by the House Democrats will open up that window that they can possibly start counting seven days earlier,” Davanzo said. “So we can start counting the Wednesday before up for a couple days and come back Monday. I don’t see a need for it. Nobody is asking for it, and it opens the doors for more questioning and more fraud.”
Davanzo said as far as he knew, election results came in at a decent time except for one House seat and some military ballots, so he doesn’t see a need in the bill.
He added that there are “different directives” for “different counties on how to handle things,” which will cause even more confusion.
“We have a presidential election this year, and there isn’t really a reason to change anything now,” Davanzo said. “It makes things more confusing. You’ve got 57 individual elections. Our secretary of state, in my opinion, is not unifying everybody so we’re one general election.”
State Rep. Andrew Kuzma, R-Elizabeth Township, said the bill is “going to die in the Senate,” because it allows counties to count ballots seven to 10 days prior to election day.
“I have a problem with that because people – especially in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Mon Valley and South Hills – already have concerns about election integrity and having people opening ballots a week or more before election day throws a big red flag to me,” Kuzma said.
While Kuzma said people were already skeptical about elections, he has been pushing for voter identification instead.
“I think 71% percent of Pennsylvanians want voter ID and to try to let the people put out ballots before election day,” he said. “Why we are working on that issue instead of voter ID I have no idea.
“I think that it’s more important because it secures our elections, but increases the integrity. In addition to that, the overwhelming majority of Pennsylvanians want it. As a representative, you gotta give them what they want.”
A surge in mail-in ballots in 2020’s presidential election shined a spotlight on Pennsylvania’s requirement, according to the Associated Press, after it took four days of counting for news agencies to project Biden as the winner of Pennsylvania, giving him the electoral votes necessary to win the White House.
In 2020, 2.65 million ballots were cast by mail in Pennsylvania, the nation’s fifth-most populous state, or almost 40% of the total, according to the AP.
The majority of mail-in ballots (around 70%) in Pennsylvania are cast by registered Democrats and the majority of in-person voting on Election Day is done by registered Republicans.
“If you wanna keep the conspiracy theories going, you don’t want this bill to pass,” Conklin said. “You want them to stop dead in their tracks, have the results during election night. This will stop all those conspiracy theories.
“Everybody wants those results on election night. We should be able to give you those results, except for those results that come on Friday or overseas ballots. If it is not within five or six votes, we will know the results without any quibbling, fighting, anything.”