Count the Damn Votes!

 I live in Pennsylvania, which only began mail-in voting (without the need to provide an excuse) this year. It has been, IMO, an absolute mess.

First of all, the law allows each county to decide for itself when it will begin processing mail-in ballots, as long as they do not begin before polls open on Election Day (that's 7AM Eastern Time). Some, like Philadelphia County, began as soon as the polls opened. Many others did not begin until the polls had closed 13 hours later. (To be fair, that used to be the standard, when the only mail-ins were a handful of absentee ballots in each precinct.) The law should have mandated a uniform standard.

And that standard should have begun before Election Day. Yeah, yeah, I know all the arguments against doing that--if you start counting the mail-ins before polls open, people will find out who's ahead and that will affect how they vote. Poppycock! Washington and Oregon have had mail-in voting for nearly thirty years, processing ballots as they arrive, and in all that time, they've never had a "leak". That means that, as soon as polls close in those states, they can announce something like 85% of the vote totals. Last night, they did just that and the various news organizations--AP, the networks--were able to project a winner in both states immediately at 11 PM ET. 

I'm not sure how Washington and Oregon maintain that level of security, but I know how I would suggest Pennsylvania could do it. As ballots come in and are processed, the information is stored in a computer file that can only be accessed by the county head of elections...and that requires a two-level passcode. The county head has one code...and the other is provided by the PA Secretary of State (the ultimate election authority in the state) when the polls close on Election Day. Once both passcodes are input, the file can be accessed and the results announced. Yes, some mail-in ballots will not have been included yet (PA permits ballots postmarked on Election Day to be counted as long as they are received within three days)...but that would be a statistically insignificant number most years.

I welcome those with more computer expertise than I to look at that plan and tell me where it fails or can be improved, but there is no reason Pennsylvania's votes should not be substantially already counted this morning.