Philadelphia aims to speed up mail ballot processing on Election Day with newer equipment
A few relatively minor changes would allow Philadelphia to process mail ballots much faster and finish counting them much sooner after polls close on Election Day, an analysis by Votebeat and Spotlight PA has found.
The analysis found a wide disparity between Allegheny and Philadelphia — Pennsylvania’s two largest counties — in how quickly they counted mail ballots during the November 2022 election.
That year, Philadelphia processed ballots at a rate of 5,000 per hour, while Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh and surrounding municipalities, processed more than 12,000 ballots per hour, based on an analysis of information provided by the counties, publicly available data, and data from the Pennsylvania Department of State.
Public records show Philadelphia already has equipment that can open ballot envelopes much more quickly than its current equipment. Yet — until Wednesday, less than a month before the election — it was unclear if the city commissioners who make election decisions planned to use faster machines. That changed after the publication of this story, when the board agreed during a public meeting to move forward with using both the older and newer machines on Nov. 5.
https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2024/10/pennsylvania-election-2024-philadelphia-allegheny-county-mail-ballot-count/