Editorial | Who to blame while waiting for election results

On Nov. 3, 2020, voters cast their ballots for the 46th president of the United States, and the states got to work counting up everyone’s votes. By that Tuesday night, nobody knew who won the election. Wednesday came and went with no answer. As did Thursday. As did Friday.

It wasn’t until about 11:30 a.m. on Saturday — for many people, over four whole days after they left their polling place — that Pennsylvania finally had its result, giving Joe Biden 20 electoral votes and pushing him over the 270 he needed to win the race.

Pennsylvania wasn’t the only state to drag its feet counting the ballots. In response to the nearly 100 hours of anxiety the nation experienced during that election, some states have changed their voting laws to facilitate the counting process. Michigan, for example, passed new legislation allowing election workers to begin processing mail-in ballots before election day.

Pennsylvania did not. Despite pressure from election clerks, lawmakers have not changed our laws for ballot processing. Pennsylvania had a severe backlog of mail-in ballots in 2020, and though a bill that would have addressed the issue passed the state house, it got held up in the Senate, which means we will likely once again not hear our state’s results until days after Nov. 5.

So, in the not-unlikely scenario that you are sitting at home on Thursday night watching CNN and wondering why our lousy state is still an undecided gray on the map, make sure you know who to get angry at.

The late results will not be the fault of the election workers — the ones busting their asses trying to process and tabulate millions of votes in one night. It will be the fault of our state congress, which refused to allow pre-processing of mail-in ballots despite its effectiveness in 43 other states. 

Allegheny County alone has received nearly 200,000 mail-in ballots, and while they do expect to have them all counted by midnight on Tuesday, not every county has the resources to say the same. One thing is universal — processing the ballots earlier would help incredibly.

Pennsylvania is one of the most important and contentious states in the 2024 election, and we very well may be the deciding factor in who wins. If 300 million people must once again wait days on end to know the results of what many consider the most important election of their lives, the responsibility will fall solely on our state lawmakers.

It’s time to focus our discontent on the correct people to blame so we can have the quick election we deserve in 2028.

The Pitt News editorial is a weekly article written by the opinions editors in collaboration with all other desk editors. It reflects the collective opinion of the current Pitt News editorial staff.