Pennsylvania will play a pivotal role in the 2020 election. Every Pennsylvanian should be proud that our votes matter more than ever this year and will count in determining who holds power everywhere from the White House to the state legislature. But to help ensure that Pennsylvanians' votes are counted quickly, accurately, and efficiently, the legislature needs to act now — before it’s too late — to give state and local election officials the power to begin processing absentee ballots prior to Election Day.
Pennsylvania currently ranks as one of just six states in which election officials cannot process absentee ballots before Election Day. This means state and local officials cannot verify voters' signatures, open envelopes, or carry out other essential administrative tasks that must be done before absentee ballots can be counted.
This year, more than 2.5 million citizens of Pennsylvania have requested absentee ballots amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led many voters to choose to vote safely and securely from home — a record number that will likely represent about 33% of all voters in our state. Four years ago, fewer than 5% of Pennsylvanians voted using absentee ballots.
One reason more people are able to vote absentee this year is the bipartisan election reform law signed by the governor last year, which made it more convenient for Pennsylvanians to request absentee ballots. At the time this bill was passed, House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster) praised it, saying, rightly, that the legislation was “not written to benefit one party or the other, or any one candidate or single election.”
Now there is bipartisan effort underway to allow election officials to begin processing absentee ballots prior to Election Day. Establishing a multi-day processing period would give state and local election officials the time they need to deal with the flood of absentee ballots we know is coming. Such a plan would not benefit one party over the other, nor would it benefit one candidate more than another. And one way to help guarantee that neither party benefits from this change is by including language in this legislation to prohibit the publication or leaking of information prior to the close of polls on Election Day about how much support any candidate has garnered through absentee ballots.
Failing to allow election officials to begin processing absentee ballots early will put undue pressure on them on Election Day. Failing to provide more time for processing these ballots also means that it is more likely that Pennsylvanians — and the entire country — will be waiting for days, if not weeks, for the winner of races here to be determined. The sad truth is that an extended period of uncertainty about election results — especially the winner of the presidential race here in Pennsylvania — will only harm the public’s trust in the sacred institutions and election processes that have made our country a beacon of freedom to the whole world.
The good news is that there is still time for legislators and the governor to get this right and help avoid unnecessary delays in tabulating the vote. Now is the time for Pennsylvania to listen to state and local election officials who are saying they need more time to process the deluge of absentee ballots they are expecting because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It would be a shame if the legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf fail to act on this critical issue before Election Day. The time to remedy this problem is now.
Jim Gerlach is a Republican who represented Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2003 to 2015. He is now a member of Issue One’s ReFormers Caucus, a bipartisan group of more than 200 former members of Congress, governors, and Cabinet officials who are advocating for solutions to fix the country’s broken political system. He lives in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania.