The view from a counting center in the crucial state of Pennsylvaniapublished at 11:50 PM Greenwich Mean Time November 5
Tom Bateman
Reporting from Pennsylvania
I have just been to the vote counting center in the city of Philadelphia, in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
In a warehouse, dozens of election workers remove ballots from their envelopes. They check whether they match voters’ identity details and prepare them to be counted by machine.
There is a tremendous amount of security. We had to collect our accreditation at the police station, we are accompanied everywhere by an official and have to stay in a closed area intended for the press within the counting room itself.
Party-affiliated count watchers must remain behind barriers and the on-site ‘observer rules’ provide strict instructions to ensure no interference, warning ‘violators will be removed and their eligibility as observers will be revoked’.
There’s a good reason for all this. In 2020, mail-in votes in Pennsylvania took several days to count.
With more Democrats than Republicans voting by mail, early results — based on in-person voting on Election Day — initially showed Trump with a lead, but his lead shrank over the days as more mail-in ballots were counted. The time it took allowed him to claim widespread fraud without any evidence.
This time, to help refute similar claims, officials are keen to demonstrate the extent to which this count is monitored and secured.
Lisa Deeley, vice chair of Philadelphia’s three-member board in charge of elections, tells me they also expect a much faster count than in 2020 because voting card checks have been digitized.
“Listen, this is the city where democracy was born,” she says, referring to early American history. “And this is the city that will continue to uphold and flourish democracy.”