A last-minute effort in Philadelphia to ensure double votes aren’t counted means the result of Pennsylvania’s highly watched U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races likely won’t be known until after Election Day.
The Philadelphia City Commissioners voted 2-1 in an emergency meeting early Tuesday to reinstate a process to reconcile the voter rolls 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.
Under the reinstated process, the final ballots are likely to be counted on Friday, depending on how many ballots are cast, Philadelphia Deputy Commissioner Nick Custodio said.
Andrew Richman, an attorney with Philadelphia's Law Department, said 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.
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“The Court’s unfortunate opinion has cast unwarranted doubt on the integrity of Philadelphia’s election at the eleventh hour and will feed disinformation campaigns that seize on every opportunity to cultivate distrust in the democratic process,” Richman wrote in an emailed statement. “The City Commissioners cannot ignore public concerns — however unfounded —created by the Court’s opinion.”
Meanwhile, in Luzerne County, dozens of polling places ran out of printer paper for ballots, causing voters to be turned away, NBC News’ Dasha Burns reported.
Decision 2022
Coverage of the 2022 elections
As a result, Burns said, a court made the unprecedented move of extending polling hours to 10 p.m., two hours past the normal 8 p.m. deadline.
