Update (9:30 p.m.): Lancaster County’s Elections Office uploaded its first tranche of ballot results to its online dashboard at about 8:30 Tuesday evening: 48,093 mail-in ballots.
They are expected to be followed later Tuesday by more than 15,000 more — the county had received about 63,000 mail-in ballots as of Monday evening, and hundreds more Tuesday — and then by the results of in-person voting at 240 polling places.
The county’s dashboard is here. Statewide results are available on the Department of State’s dashboard, available here. All results are unofficial until certified.
At a 7 p.m. briefing, one hour before polls closed Commissioner and Board of Elections Chairman Ray D’Agostino said some polling locations had seen scanner malfunctions and some needed additional supplies of paper forms, but “all in all, things continue to go well.”
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Based on turnout throughout the day, D’Agostino and Elections Chief Clerk Christa Miller said they expected some long lines of people waiting to vote when polls closed at 8 p.m. Be patient, they counseled: As long as you’re in line, you will be allowed to cast your ballot.
Poll workers take steps to ensure no one joins the line after 8 p.m., Miller said, either by bringing everyone inside the polling place when practicable, or stationing someone at the line’s end.
By 9 a.m., national news organizations were beginning to call selected results. In Florida, a constitutional measure protecting abortion rights failed to pass, the Associated Press said, while in North Carolina, Republican Mark Robinson, whose campaign was mired in scandal, lost to Democrat Josh Stein.
Pennsylvania is considered a key swing state in the presidential election, but the outcome may not be known right away. In a news conference Tuesday evening, Gov. Josh Shapiro and Commonwealth Secretary Al Schmidt counseled patience, saying the state is committed to an accurate result.
Update (5:30 p.m.): As of mid-afternoon Tuesday, polling throughout Lancaster County remained steady, and things were going “extremely well,” county Commissioner and Election Board Chairman Ray D’Agostino said.
At the County Government Center, more than 50% of the roughly 63,000 mail-in ballots the Elections Office had received had been opened and scanned, Chief Elections Clerk Christa Miller said. She said she fully expects all 63,000 ballots to be tabulated and the results uploaded to the county’s election dashboard Tuesday evening.
The county invested heavily in improving its mail-in ballot processing throughput, buying several high-speed scanners, paid for with state election integrity grant funds, and bringing on additional volunteers.
Voters can continue to drop off mail-in ballots at the Elections Office at the County Government Center, 150 N. Queen St., until 8 a.m., when the polls close. As of 3 p.m., about 700 had been dropped off, Miller said. Voters can only drop off their own ballot, not anyone else’s.
D’Agostino and his colleagues reiterated that anyone who is in line at a polling place by 8 p.m. is allowed to vote. Because that’s the case, it may take extra time before poll workers can close out their operations, reconcile their data and return their results to the county. Still, Miller said the county should be able to post full results tonight.
LNP reported that Republican state House 96th District candidate Eric Beezer was using his cell phone to film members of the Franklin & Marshall College Democrats over their objections at the Lancaster Theological Seminary polling place and uploading the videos to his campaign TikTok page.
Beezer is running against Democrat Nikki Rivera for a seat being vacated by state Rep. Mike Sturla. Sturla told One United Lancaster he happened to stop by the polling place during his Election Day rounds and was in conversation with activist and Republican strategist Ron Harper Jr. when Beezer approached them, filming.
Beezer showed One United Lancaster the recording. In it, he says Sturla touched him, and that it constitutes assault. That’s not the case, Sturla said: He put his hand in front of Beezer’s phone, but touched neither it nor him.
Under Pennsylvania law, it is illegal to intimidate voters or interfere with casting a ballot. Prohibited activity includes “photographing, recording or videotaping voters to intimidate them” and “disrupting, following or interrogating voters.”
Miller said the Elections Office had received no such complaints as of 3 p.m. Tuesday. Judges of elections have jurisdiction only within 10 feet of a polling place entrance, she said.
Previously reported:
Lancaster County appeared Tuesday to be on its way to a potentially record turnout for Election Day.
“We are seeing high volume,” and reports indicate things are running smoothly, County Commissioner Ray D’Agostino, who chairs the Board of Elections, said at a 10 a.m. media briefing, the first of several updates the county is providing throughout the day.
Precincts across the county were reporting steady numbers of voters and many had long lines early on. There were some issues at a couple of locations getting ballot scanners up and running, but they were resolved, Elections Chief Clerk Christa Miller said.
Tuesday’s election caps a protracted and contentious presidential campaign between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. Their battle is expected to come down to seven swing states, including Pennsylvania, where polls indicate they are neck-and-neck.
Also on the ballot are state and U.S. House seats, a tight U.S. Senate race between Democratic incumbent Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick. In Lancaster city, voters are being asked to decide whether the city will adopt a home rule charter.
Setting the stage for a large turnout, Lancaster County’s voter registration stands at an all-time high, 366,015. Of those, 187,159 (51%) are Republicans and 114,771 (31%) are Democrats, with the remainder third-party or independent.
Polls opened at 7 a.m. and remain open until 8 p.m. The weather was sunny and unseasonably warm for November, with highs in the low 70s.
At the 11th District polling place in Manheim Township, St. Matthew Evangelical Lutheran Church, more than 290 people had cast ballots by 11:15, roughly a third of those registered. At Lancaster city’s 8th Ward, 2nd Precinct polling place at the Rodney Park building, there were more than 180 ballots cast by noon, a large number for the location.
Anyone who is in line by 8 p.m. will be allowed to vote, D’Agostino said. 8 p.m. is also the deadline to return mail-in ballots to the Elections Office at the County Government Center, 150 N. Queen St., Lancaster.
Polling places won’t be able to close up shop, reconcile their voting totals and deliver their results to the county until everyone who arrived by the 8 p.m. has voted. If they have long lines at that point, it could delay things, which means it could take longer for the county to post results, D’Agostino said.
At the same time thousands of voters were casting their ballots in person, around 70 volunteers were sorting and opening envelopes for thousands of mail-in ballots. Just under 63,000 had been returned as of Monday night, Miller said. As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, about 10,000 had been scanned, and Miller was confident the rest would be processed by evening.
That operation is being monitored by local and national political party representatives. They have uniformly given the operation high marks, D’Agostino said.
The county’s election results will be posted here. The new dashboard is more user-friendly than its predecessor, Miller noted: Among other things, it has separate columns for mail-in and in-person ballots.
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, a judge approved extending voting in Cambria County an extra two hours, to 10 p.m., due to a malfunction that prevented voters’ completed ballots from being scanned.
Nationwide, Election Day “unfolded largely smoothly,” the Associated Press reported. In Missouri, flooding issues affected two polling sites, while in Georgia, there were several bomb threats, all deemed non-credible, AP said.
