What Pa.’s anticipated high in-person turnout on Tuesday could mean for lines and reporting results

When polls open at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, officials across Pennsylvania are expecting more voters to arrive and cast their ballots in person than they’ve seen in nearly a decade.

More than 6 million voters cast ballots in the presidential election in 2016; the lion’s share of those were in person on Election Day as Pennsylvania had not yet enacted widespread mail voting.

But since then, the voting landscape in Pennsylvania has dramatically changed.

In 2019, the Pennsylvania General Assembly approved no-excuse mail voting, coincidentally making the critical change just before a pandemic hit. Mail voting went from a little-used method for absentee voters to one that dominated the 2020 election.

But in the years since, voters have begun returning to the polls on Election Day. Mail voting has remained a popular option — as of Thursday, more than 2 million Pennsylvania voters had requested a mail ballot and more than 1.6 million had returned their ballots. But that number doesn’t come close to the number of mail ballots cast four years ago.

The change will impact both how voters experience Election Day and how campaigns and analysts interpret the results as they’re being reported.

“So much of it will be dependent upon Election Day because it’s not 2020, people are not going to all vote by mail,” Neil Makhija, a Democrat who chairs the Montgomery County Election Board, said in an interview about the impact of the Philly suburbs earlier this month.

As analysts predict 2024 could become the highest-turnout election in U.S. history, election officials are preparing for more in-person voters than they’ve seen in years.

Here’s what that means:

For the most part, election officials have said they don’t expect longer lines on Nov. 5 as a result of higher in-person turnout.

Election officials have employed new equipment in polling places, like electronic poll books, that help poll workers check in voters and move them through a polling place quicker.

Lines are most likely first thing in the morning, when doors open and voters try to cast their ballots before the workday.

Technical issues or an unexpected surge of voters could also cause longer lines at a polling place for a given period of time.

More in-person voters will likely mean election officials in Pennsylvania are able to count ballots more quickly.

In previous years, slowdowns in counting and reporting of results have been the result of the long process surrounding counting mail ballots under the state’s law.

Pennsylvania election officials are not allowed to begin processing mail ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. This process includes slicing open ballot envelopes, removing ballots from the envelopes, flattening them, and scanning them into counting machines.

Counting of in-person votes, on the other hand, is a much quicker process because of voting machines used by voters on Election Day.

Depending on turnout, and how many mail ballots are returned to the election office on Election Day, officials anticipate they will be able to finish tallying mail ballots within a day or two of Election Day rather than the five days it took in 2020.

Of course, additional ballots, including provisional ballots and overseas ballots, may still be tallied after that period.

The leads in races on election night from the presidential race on down may fluctuate. This is entirely normal.

The first votes that counties generally count and report are mail ballots that came in before Election Day and were processed between 7 a.m. and polls closing.

As of Thursday, registered Democrats accounted for 56% of ballots that had been returned in Pennsylvania. Republicans represented 33% of returned ballots. While Republicans have increased their share of mail ballots from 2020, it is still likely that first batch of ballots will skew toward Democratic candidates, including Vice President Kamala Harris.

Similarly, Election Day returns that will be reported throughout the evening and night on Tuesday are likely to skew toward former President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.

The results that are reported overnight and in the days following the election will be additional mail ballots that came in on Election Day. Once again, these are likely to skew toward Democrats as they have an overall lead in the number of mail ballots requested.

How close the race is will determine when news organizations, like the Associated Press, declare the winner. While it is possible the winner of the state will be clear Tuesday night, it is also possible that it may be days before it is clear who won the Commonwealth.

For voters heading to their polling place in person on Tuesday, polls open at 7 a.m. Anyone who is in line at their polling place by the time polls close at 8 p.m. will be allowed to vote.

However, in order to vote on Election Day, voters must report to their assigned polling place.

Voters can locate their assigned polling place at the Department of State’s website or their county election office website.