One of the biggest battleground states on the electoral map, has a mail-in ballot counting extension that will take "days" to declare a winner, according to Democrat Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.
"I expect that the overwhelming majority of ballots in Pennsylvania – that's mail-in and absentee ballots, as well as in-person ballots – will be counted within a matter of days," Boockvar told NBC News' "Meet the Press."
"The counties are staffing up, have a ton of equipment, best practices in place, and are planning, for the most part, to count 24/7 until it's done."
The ballot extension might have a constitutional change to put before the Supreme Court, so Boockvar urges voters to cast their ballots before 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
"What we want to do, first and foremost, is say to the voters, 'ignore the lawsuits, ignore the hype. Just get your ballots in today,'" she told hold Chuck Todd. "The best way you can make sure that your ballot will be counted is to get it in by 8 p.m. on Nov. 3. And there's never been so many choices in Pennsylvania to do that. There's county election offices, secure drop boxes, other authorized locations.
"You can find all that on votesPA.com. But, yes, the standing law in Pennsylvania right now is that ballots, as long as they're received by 5 p.m. on Nov. 6, postmarked by Nov. 3, they will be counted."
Boockvar did note the ballots received after 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday will be parsed separately in the event a Supreme Court ruling determines their validity.
"For effective election administration and making sure we have clarity in the counties, those ballots will be segregated, but they will be counted," she concluded.
The Supreme Court has passed on determining the constitutionality of the ballot extension before the election, but legal challenges could be waged to surface the debate up to the nation's highest court.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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