Wolf: ‘Every vote is going to count,’ Trump lawsuit is ‘simply wrong’

Gov. Tom Wolf reiterated his confidence in the state’s elections process Wednesday night as workers statewide raced to tabulate hundreds of thousands of ballots left to be counted and the Trump administration attempts to block the count.

“Pennsylvania has made important progress in counting millions of mail-in ballots. That continues as we speak,” Wolf said during a news conference shortly after 6 p.m. “And the eyes of the world are on Pennsylvania, so it’s especially important.”

Kathy Boockvar, commonwealth secretary of state, said state elections officials “will be continuing to work into the night, all of us, to support the counties to get this done.

“I expect hundreds of thousands of more probably to be counted still tonight,” said Boockvar. “We’re talking about a matter of days before the overwhelming majority of ballots are counted.”

Wolf acknowledged the results are taking longer than Pennsylvania voters are used to.

“But that’s actually a good sign. Part of the reason for that is because so many people have voted,” said Wolf. The governor cited a record-high 9 million Pennsylvanians registering to vote and more than 3 million applying for mail-in ballots this year. It’s the first presidential general election in which all voters here have been eligible to vote by mail.

“We’re taking the time to make sure in this new system that went into place last year, that all the votes are being counted,” Wolf said.

And in unlike some other states, Pennsylvania elections workers could not begin to prep the mail-in ballots for scanning until Election Day, with some resource-strapped counties such as Beaver choosing not to start doing so until Wednesday.

“There’s a whole confluence of things — a lot of people voting, a new election law that went into place … and we have these unusual rules in Pennsylvania that we can’t start to count until the polls close,” Wolf said. “All of those things conspire to make the results come in a couple days later than we normally get them.”

On Wednesday morning, state officials said that about half of Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots had been counted.

“The delay that we’re seeing is a sign the system is working,” Gov. Tom Wolf said during a 10:30 a.m. press conference. “(There are) millions of mail-in ballots that are being counted, and that takes longer than the way we used to do with the in-person voting.”

By 3 p.m., 1.5 million mail-in votes had been counted and more than 1 million ballots remained uncounted, state data show.

Another 696 precincts, or 7.6% of precincts statewide, had not reported results.

More than 2.6 million Pennsylvanians cast their ballots by mail and have been accepted by the state so this year, the first time voters could vote by mail without presenting a reason. Nearly 3.1 million Pennsylvanians requested mail-in or absentee ballots.

Officials said it could be several days before they know the number of provisional ballots cast at polling locations, which would include voters who requested mail-in ballots but lost them and showed up to vote in person. Also unclear is how many voters brought mail-in ballots to the polls and had them destroyed there so they could vote in person.

“The most important thing is that we have accurate results, even if it takes a little longer than we’re used to,” Wolf said during the morning news conference.

Boockvar said that officials knew — and warned the public — it would take days to fully count all of the votes.

“We are exactly where we said we would be,” she said. “We said it was going to take some time to count the mail ballots.”

The state right now will also collect and count any ballot postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by 5 p.m. Nov. 6. Those votes will be counted but segregated, as Republicans are expected to challenge the validity of those votes.

Wolf said the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Pennsylvania filed Wednesday wrongfully alleges a lack of transparency in the process, which he described as going smoothly and abiding by all transparency rules. Wolf dismissed the suit as an attempt “to undermine this election and to block the counting of votes.”

“That is simply wrong. It goes against the most basic principles of our democracy. It takes away the right of every American citizen to cast their vote and to choose our leaders,” Wolf said Wednesday evening. “Let me be clear: In Pennsylvania, every vote is going to count. I’m going to fight like hell to protect the vote of every Pennsylvanian.”