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Presidential election vote counting continued on Thursday, and with no clear winner, eyes are on Pennsylvania. With its 20 electoral votes, the state is a key battleground between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and now the issue of counting millions of mail-in ballots has taken center stage.
Pennsylvania is one of the few states which does not start counting its mail-in ballots until Election Day, with some counties even waiting until Wednesday morning. The state is also dealing with a record-number of more than 2.5 million mail-in ballots.
As of Thursday morning, there are around 763,000 mail-in ballots to be counted, according to Pennsylvania's Department of State. Officials said they are confident that Pennsylvania be done counting by Thursday night.
"We're actually ahead of schedule of where I thought we'd be," Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar told ABC News. "I now believe that the overwhelming majority of ballots will be counted by tomorrow [Thursday]."
According to The Associated Press data, Trump is currently leading in Pennsylvania by around 140,000 votes with 87 percent of votes reported. However, Trump's lead has been reduced from several hundred thousand votes on Election day, with mail-in ballots seemingly favoring Biden.
Democrats believe that as more postal votes are counted, Biden will ultimately win the state that voted for Trump in 2016.
"I know there is enough out there in the state as long as those trends continue, I believe personally, a margin that will carry Pennsylvania for the Vice President," Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman told CNN's Chris Cuomo.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has condemned "disgraceful" efforts by the Trump administration to stop the counting of ballots via lawsuits, claiming voting fraud and rigged elections without any evidence.
"Pennsylvania is going to count every vote and make sure that everyone has their voice heard," Wolf said. "Pennsylvania is going to fight every single attempt to disenfranchise voters and continue to administer a free and fair election.
"Our election officials at the state and local level should be free to do their jobs without intimidation or attacks. These attempts to subvert the democratic process are disgraceful.
"In Philadelphia, officials are administering the election with the highest degree of transparency. There has been a livestream of the ballot-counting process available throughout the count, and all parties have canvass observers.
"Pennsylvania will fight every attempt to undermine the election. We will count every vote."
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more