The Pennsylvania Department of State announced Tuesday evening that “approximately 10,000 mail ballots” were received from the time polls closed last week through the Friday 5 p.m. deadline by which they needed to arrive in order to be counted.
These are the ballots at the center of the Trump campaign lawsuit filed prior to Election Day, which seeks to overturn a September Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision allowing the ballots to arrive up to three days after Election Day, provided they were postmarked before the polls closed.
Though that case may have ramifications for local races and future elections, it has been rendered moot in the presidential contest given Biden’s current 45,673 advantage over Trump in the Keystone State. Even if all 10,000 ballots came in for Trump, he’d still trail Biden outside of the automatic recount threshold of ~34,000. The Trump campaign would also be in the awkward position of suddenly trying to argue for their inclusion following weeks of demands that they be excluded.
The state also noted a provisional ballot count of 94,000 on Election Day — a backtrack from an earlier 101,000+ number it gave ABC News a few days ago — of which only about 17,000 have been approved and counted thus far; and another 27,650 military and overseas votes, which had until Tuesday to arrive. None of the outstanding ballots of either type are expected to make a significant dent into Biden’s margin.
