Pa. elections chief urges counties to begin counting mail-in ballots early Tuesday morning
Source: Politico
Pennsylvania's elections chief pleaded with county leaders Friday to make sure they start counting mail-in ballots the morning of Election Day, rather than waiting until the next day to begin the crucial tally.
“The outcome of Tuesday’s election could well depend on Pennsylvania. It is vitally important that the more than 3 million ballots cast by mail here be counted as soon as possible,” Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said in a statement. “The country will be looking to Pennsylvania for accurate and timely results.”
Her comments come as President Donald Trump has continued to question the need for votes to be counted after Nov. 3, despite the fact that it's been commonplace in all presidential elections. This year, in particular, as voters leaned more heavily on mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic, the prospect of vote-counting that continues days or even weeks after Election Day has grown. Pennsylvania has already agreed to segregate any mail-in ballots that arrive after the polls close on Election Day, a nod to lingering legal questions about whether those ballots will be permitted to be counted.
Boockvar's comments come amid plans by some Pennsylvania counties to postpone counting of any mail-in ballots — whether they arrive before the polls close or after — until late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pa-elections-chief-urges-counties-to-begin-counting-mail-in-ballots-early-tuesday-morning/ar-BB1ay7Lo?li=BBnb7Kz
= new reply since forum marked as read
First, get a SCOTUS order stopping all mail-in vote counting until the day after the election.
Then, get them to rule that the official count has to end at midnight on election day.
Sound about right? 
By Rachel McDevitt, State Impact Pennsylvania October 29, 2020
At least seven Pennsylvania counties will not start processing mail ballots until the morning after election day, raising alarm with some voters and the Wolf Administration.
The counties are Beaver, Butler, Cumberland, Franklin, Greene, Mercer, and Montour. It’s common for counting to continue after election night. But because the number of mail ballots is unusually high this year, it may take longer for county elections offices to finish counting them.
Pennsylvania’s status as a swing state for the presidential election means the nation could be waiting for a final tally from the commonwealth in order to know who the next president will be. That’s partly why Wolf administration officials urge counties to start processing mail ballots earlier.
Lt. Gov. John Fetterman took to Twitter Thursday morning, calling for all counties to start canvassing mailed ballots on election day. At a news conference, Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said they were in talks with the counties to convince them to start counting earlier. Counties are allowed to start pre-canvassing, or opening ballots and counting them, when the polls open at 7 a.m. on election day, Nov. 3. Canvassing, or actually recording the vote, can’t start until 8 p.m. on the 3rd.
https://whyy.org/articles/some-pa-counties-to-delay-counting-mail-ballots/
My concern is Erie which was mentioned in another article --
7:00 AM - October 29, 2020
At least two Pa. counties will wait to count mail ballots
Elections officials in Cumberland County, just outside Harrisburg, won’t begin counting mail ballots until the day after Election Day, citing the need to focus their attention and resources on in-person voting next Tuesday. “The Board of Elections, comprised of the Cumberland County Commissioners, is committed to counting every vote and not certifying the results in Cumberland County until every eligible vote, whether completed at the polling place or via mail-in or absentee ballot, is properly counted,” Gary Eichelberger, chair of the county commissioners, said in a statement Wednesday.
The decision drew a response from state Rep. Torren Ecker, a Republican whose district includes Cumberland County. On Twitter Wednesday night, Ecker agreed with Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, who is calling for Cumberland County to canvass all ballots beginning at 7 a.m. on Election Day.
Officials in Erie County, in Northwestern Pennsylvania, a plan to only count mail ballots for a few hours late Tuesday night, CNN reported. More than 117,000 voters have requested mail ballots in the two counties, meaning those votes won’t be reflected in the unofficial results on election night.
The counting of mail ballots has been one of the most contentious, worried-over pieces of this election. With a massive number of mail ballots to count this year — state officials expect about three million votes to be cast by mail — it will take days to get votes counted. And Pennsylvania law prohibits counties from processing ballots before Election Day, meaning election night results will only reflect a fraction of the mail vote.
[snip]
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/live/elections-2020-candidates-updates-news-pennsylvania-20201029.html#card-1327137661
Philly applied for and received a $10,000,000 grant directed towards handling elections, so we bought all sorts of equipment to speed up the process and hired staff to operate 24/7 canvasing the ballots until the count is done. In fact, all of the counties in the 5-county Philly metro area in SE PA, will be doing similar and this part of the state has about 1/3rd of PA's total population.
(John Hansberry operates an extractor at Philadelphia's ballot counting center at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The machine removes sorted mail-in ballots from their double envelopes. Hansberry is using dummy ballots for this demonstration. No ballots can be legally opened before Election Day. (Emma Lee/WHYY))
Are there enough workers scheduled to open the envelopes, pull out and unfold the ballots, stack them up to be scanned?
The ballot scanning will go quickly because that's all automated, but I believe the ripping open of envelopes is done by hand. Somebody please educate me?
show to talk about this issue. But before she came on, he showed the 7 PA counties that do not plan to start counting absentee ballots until Nov 4 (Wed). O'Donnell pointed out that all 7 are counties Trump carried in 2016 (and is likely to win again), then said you'd better believe Trump will want ballots counted after election day. 
