More than 1.3 million Pennsylvania voters requested an absentee or mail ballot for the November 3 general election before the application deadline closed at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 27, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State — and by 8 a.m. on Wednesday, October 28, county election boards had already received 933,707 of those ballots back, a statewide return rate of 71 percent with less than a week left before Election Day.
Source: ABC27 / WHTM via 28/22 News
The Department of State figures, reported by ABC27 (WHTM), put the total number of ballot requests at 1,313,429. Registered Democrats requested 840,881 of them, or 64 percent; registered Republicans requested 324,944, or 25 percent; and independent and third-party voters requested 147,604, or 11 percent. The partisan split in who votes by mail remains one of the defining features of Pennsylvania elections, and it shapes how both parties are spending the final days of the midterm campaign.
Source: ABC27 / WHTM via 28/22 News
Allegheny and Philadelphia lead the state
Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, requested the most mail ballots of any county in the state, with 161,188. Philadelphia was second with 128,032 requests. Of the ballots already returned, 610,617 came from registered Democrats, 233,986 from registered Republicans and 89,104 from independent and third-party voters, the Department of State data show. Only 14 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties had a return rate below the state average of 71 percent. Lehigh County, in the Lehigh Valley, had the lowest return rate in the state at 59 percent, and the other counties below the average were, in order, Blair, Montgomery, Huntingdon, Monroe, Fulton, Luzerne, McKean, Chester, Berks, Northampton, Philadelphia and Delaware.
Source: ABC27 / WHTM via 28/22 News
How the numbers built up in the final week
The final tally caps a steep final-week climb. In his weekly media briefing before the election, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt reminded voters that Pennsylvania offers on-demand mail-ballot voting — going in person to a county elections office, applying for a mail ballot, receiving it, filling it out and returning it all in one visit — an option that stayed available until the same October 27 deadline. At the time of that briefing, about 1,134,000 mail-ballot applications had been approved and about 30 percent of mail ballots had been returned, including about 7,300 ballots requested through the on-demand process. By 8 a.m. on Monday, October 26, the Department of State reported 831,306 ballots returned out of 1,276,278 approved — meaning more than 100,000 further ballots arrived in roughly the following two days alone.
Source: Pennsylvania Department of State (pa.gov)
“County election offices must receive completed mail ballots by 8 p.m. Election Day for them to count,” Secretary Al Schmidt said. A ballot mailed on November 3 with a November 3 postmark does NOT count in Pennsylvania — it must physically be in the county office's hands by 8 p.m.
The rules that decide whether a returned ballot counts
Pennsylvania allows any registered voter to cast a ballot by mail without giving a reason. A mail-in ballot is different from an absentee ballot, which is for voters who will be outside their municipality or cannot reach their polling place because of illness or disability. To be counted, a voted ballot must be sealed inside the yellow secrecy envelope marked “official election ballot,” and that envelope must then be sealed inside the pre-addressed outer return envelope, which the voter must sign and date with the day it is completed — an unsigned or undated outer envelope will not be counted, according to the state's voter guidance reported by WESA. Counties may begin opening mail ballots at 7 a.m. on Election Day to prepare them for counting, but no votes may be tabulated before 8 p.m., and the first results reported on election night typically come from ballots received before Election Day.
Source: 90.5 WESA
Background: why Pennsylvania mail voting draws national attention
Pennsylvania is one of the most closely watched battleground states in the country, and its mail-voting system — greatly expanded by a state law passed in 2019 — has been litigated repeatedly, including over whether ballots in undated return envelopes may be counted. The scale is smaller than the last presidential cycle: the Department of State reported 2.2 million mail-ballot applications approved for the 2024 general election with an 89 percent return rate, figures that underline how midterm turnout runs lower even as mail voting remains the method of choice for nearly two-thirds Democratic and a quarter Republican requesters in this cycle. With federal courts in other states fighting this week over late challenges to state election procedures, Pennsylvania's settled deadlines — registration closed October 19, applications closed October 27, ballots due back by 8 p.m. on November 3 — are the rules every campaign in the state is now working to.
Source: ABC27 / WHTM via 28/22 News
What it means for Punjabi and South Asian voters in Pennsylvania
Philadelphia and its suburbs, including Upper Darby and the wider Delaware and Montgomery county corridor, are home to one of the East Coast's largest Punjabi and South Asian communities, and Philadelphia's 128,032 mail-ballot requests — the second-highest county total in the state — include many first- and second-generation immigrant voters who vote by mail because of work schedules, including trucking and shift work that make a fixed polling-place visit hard. For those voters the practical risks are the paperwork details, not the politics: a missing signature or a missing handwritten date on the outer envelope, or a ballot still sitting in a mailbox on Election Day instead of in the county office, is enough for a lawful vote to go uncounted.
What happens next
Voters who have already requested a mail ballot but have not returned it still have options: hand-deliver the completed ballot to their county elections office or a county-designated drop box before 8 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3, or surrender the mail ballot at their polling place on Election Day and vote in person instead. Anyone who requested a mail ballot and never received it can vote a provisional ballot at the polls. The Department of State's online tracker lets voters check whether their returned ballot has been received, using the name, date of birth and county from their application. Counties will report their first results after polls close at 8 p.m. on November 3, with mail ballots received before Election Day expected to form the first reported batch.