PHILADELPHIA — Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania are trying to block the counting of thousands of presidential election ballots that arrive in county offices on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
A state Supreme Court ruling upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court declared that ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 or with illegible postmarks must be counted in the presidential election if they are received by local election offices by Friday afternoon.
GOP lawmakers are furious at Pennsylvania's Democratic secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar, for instructing county election officers to tally those ballots, even though she has ordered them segregated and counted separately in case the U.S. Supreme Court grants the Republicans' renewed request to invalidate them.
State Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati and Majority Leader Jake Corman called on Boockvar to resign, saying she was trying "to weaken the state's voting system and damage the integrity and confidence in our elections."
"As leaders, we simply cannot stand by and allow Kathy Boockvar's blatant disregard for the legislative process and the law to continue," they said in a joint statement.
Boockvar responded that "they're the ones that should resign for not having allowed Pennsylvania and this nation to start pre-canvassing ballots early, as 46 other states across the country have done."
"We would be getting results a lot sooner if they had," she said.
Pennsylvania law bars election officials from starting the time-consuming procedure of processing ballot envelopes until the morning of an election, which could delay its results for at least several days.
With millions of Pennsylvania voters casting ballots by mail for the first time this year, election officials around the state called on the GOP-controlled Legislature and the Democratic governor to change the law, but they failed to reach an agreement.
With the nation now in suspense over the slow ballot count in Pennsylvania, a state that could decide the presidential election, Boockvar cast the Republicans' moves as part of the GOP's broader efforts to suppress votes.
"Look, they don't like the late counting of ballots, because they don't like anything that allows more eligible voters to be enfranchised," Boockvar said. "So let's be clear about that."
