Morrisons Cove Lines Up To Vote

The Herald goes to press on Tuesday afternoon, so no election results will be available in this edition of the Herald.

For local election results, please check the Herald's website and the Nov. 12 edition.

The Herald's website is at

http://www.mcheraldonline.com.

Local results will be posted as they are available and reliable.

Polling locations around the Cove reported busy Tuesday mornings.

At Martinsburg District 1, which votes in the Community Center of the Martinsburg Church of God on South Market Street, poll workers reported a line until about 9 a.m., when it slowed down. By then, more than 100 people had voted, which poll workers said was more than twice the normal turnout.

A voter at the Taylor Township Municipal Building reported being in line by 6:30 a.m. and being voter No. 16.

A voter in Bloomfield Township, Bedford County, reported a very busy poll just after 7 a.m.

National news media organizations were reporting Tuesday morning that at least 98 million Americans had already voted. That number was about 70 percent of the total turnout in the 2016 election.

Pennsylvania is considered to be a key state and an Electoral College prize with its 20 votes. The state was contested by both candidates, with both making last-minute stops in the state and appealing to voters for support.

However, pundits and election officials also worried that Pennsylvania might be a bottleneck in vote counting.

In 2020, for the first time, Pennsylvania permitted voters to request an "absentee" ballot without providing an excuse. Since voters previously had to provide an excuse to vote by mail, the removal of the need for an excuse was considered likely to increase the number of people voting by mail.

Add to this the concerns of some people and communities about the spread of COVID-19, and many Pennsylvanians decided to exercise their right to vote and do so by mail.

Voting by mail has been going on in other states for years, but this year was Pennsylvania's first try at expanding the number of people who could vote by mail by not requiring an excuse.

The Philadelphia Enquirer reported on Nov. 2 that about 3.1 million Pennsylvania voters had submitted applications for mail ballots, and about 2.4 million had returned them to county election offices, according to state data.

Because of Pennsylvania's rules regarding when ballots can be counted, and the fact that this is the state's first experience with widespread voting by mail, some election experts predicted that the state could be slow to count and announce results.

Pennsylvania law prohibits election officials from processing mail-in ballots until election day, so even if ballots arrived by mail before election day, they could not be counted until election day.

All these factors raised concerns that Pennsylvania, a key state in the 2020 presidential election, might need several days past Election Day to count and announce its vote totals.