7600 Ballots Still Need To Be Counted In Montco: Latest Election Updates

NORRISTOWN, PA — Counting of ballots in Montgomery County continued Friday as final results for a number of close races in the 2021 election remained unknown.

As of early Friday evening, about 7,600 mail-in ballots still needed to be counted across the county, officials said. Some 6,000 ballots were counted from late Thursday into Friday.

Two key issues are causing the delays, officials said. One is the processing of faulty mail-in ballots that were mistakenly sent out weeks ago. Officials immediately sent out corrected ballots, but some residents still returned the faulty ballots. These ballots need to go through a special verification process to ensure each individual's vote is only counted once.

The second issue in that there are higher than usual number of ballots which cannot be scanned by the ballot machines, the county says. It's unclear what is driving that issue.

Here are the latest updates on the election from around the county:

• A total of 72,049 mail-in ballots were received in the county this year. 64,452 had been counted as of late Friday.
• In-person ballots accounted for 151,027 votes. All of those votes have been counted.
• Officials say that they've removed 439 "naked" ballots, or ballots that were mailed in without the secrecy envelope. These ballots will not be counted.
• The delays in the county have renewed calls for election reform from Republicans who have long expressed distrust in mail-in balloting. Montgomery County Commissioner and 2022 gubernatorial candidate Joe Gale called it a "mess." "Collecting and counting votes in a timely and trusted manner continues to be a major problem due to Act 77 - the toxic mail-in voting legislation passed by every Republican State Senator and signed into law by Democrat Governor Tom Wolf in 2019. Act 77 allows for 50 days of no-excuse mail-in voting and prohibits counties from tallying those mail-in votes until 8PM on Election Night - thus delaying the official vote results for days, if not weeks, in some areas."
• As of Friday, voter turnout in the county is at 36.2 percent for Tuesday's election. That's down slightly from the most recent off-year election in 2019 (37.9 percent) but still an increase from 2017 (31.67 percent). It's dramatically lower than 2020's presidential-year 84.27 percent.
• Some races do have projected winners. Democrats seem to have decisive advantages in races like the Whitemarsh Township Supervisors and Norristown Area School Board.
• Others, like contentious school board races in North Penn, Lower Providence, Perkiomen Valley, and elsewhere, remain far too close to call.
• Officials are hopeful final results are available by some point on Saturday.