Tom Bateman
Reporting from Pennsylvania
I’ve just been inside the vote counting centre for the city of Philadelphia, in swing state Pennsylvania.
Inside a warehouse, dozens of election workers are removing mail-in ballot papers from their envelopes. They check that they match voter ID records and prepare them to be counted by machine.
There’s an immense amount of security. We had to collect our accreditation from the police station, we are escorted everywhere by an official, and have to remain in a gated area allocated for press inside the counting area itself.
Party-affiliated count watchers have to remain behind barriers and “observer rules” shown on-site list strict instructions to ensure no interference, warning “violators will be removed and have their Observer eligibility revoked”.
There’s a good reason for all this. In 2020 it took several days to count the mail-in votes in Pennsylvania.
With more Democrats than Republicans voting by mail, the early results – based on in-person Election Day votes – showed Trump ahead at first, but his lead shrank over the days as more mail-in ballots were counted. The time it took opened up space for him to claim without evidence that there was widespread fraud.
This time, to help rebut any similar claims, officials are keen to demonstrate the extent to which this count is being checked and secured.
Lisa Deeley, vice chair of Philadelphia’s three-person board in charge of elections, tells me they also expect a much faster count than in 2020, as checks of mail-in ballot IDs have been digitised.
“Listen, this is the city where democracy was born,” she says, referring to early US history. “And this is the city that will continue to uphold democracy and let it thrive.”
