They're Still Counting Votes in Pa.'s Primary; 140,000 Still to Go in Philly

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Primary contests across Pennsylvania remained without a clear victor for a fourth straight day on Friday, as counties continued to tabulate an avalanche of mailed-in ballots under the debut of the state’s new vote-by-mail law.

In Philadelphia alone, election workers had processed roughly 14,000 returned ballots and still had about 140,000 to go, a city elections board spokesman said.

The Associated Press has not yet called a number of races where the contest was close or had a large number of votes yet to be counted, or both.

Those races included several where incumbent state lawmakers trail and the only competitive primary among the statewide races, a six-way Democratic primary contest for auditor general.

One race was just called Friday: Eugene DePasquale, Pennsylvania's outgoing state auditor general, has won the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, as vote-counting Friday in primary contests across the state ate up a fourth day.

DePasquale will challenge Perry in the Harrisburg-based 10th District, where Democrats believe they can unseat the four-term congressman, who won the district by fewer than 3 percentage points in 2018.

More than 1.8 million voters applied for a mail-in or absentee ballot, smashing expectations by state officials and drawing warnings that many contest results would take days to produce. Voters returned about 1.4 million of them, or more than 75%, according to information from the state’s elections office.

Turnout passed 1.9 million, or more than 22% of Pennsylvania’s 8.6 million registered voters. Meanwhile, deadlines to accept mailed ballots were extended into next week in Philadelphia and six counties.