Two months out, it is hard to know exactly how smoothly the state's vote-counting will go in the presidential election, but feelings among some close observers run from guarded optimism to grave concern.

The preliminary phase has already started: Many counties already have processed thousands of applications for mail ballots so that when actual ballots are ready, they can be quickly distributed. By law, the latest date when counties can start the processing procedure is Sept. 16.

The end of the entire process — for the general public, at least — will come when winners of federal, state and local races are known.

Rep. Scott Conklin, a Centre County lawmaker who once led his county's election board, has “grave concern” that some counties will not be able to count ballots fast enough to produce timely results on Nov. 5 or soon thereafter. But Tim Benyo, the chief clerk to the Lehigh County Election Board who has testified before lawmakers about election procedures, said “we are in a way better place than we were in 2020.”

That election cycle was impacted heavily by COVID-19 and by the fact it was the first presidential election in Pennsylvania since the 2019 passage of the biggest election law overhaul in 80 years. The changes included a framework for a vast expansion of mail-in voting to go along with traditional in-person voting.

“I do think that our counties have learned a lot since 2020 on how to basically run two elections on the same day,” said Lisa Schaefer, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.

Schaefer said there is no huge concern about delayed results in many counties. At the same time, though, counties are not happy that state government has not approved “pre-canvassing” time before Election Day to process mail ballots.

The way the law reads now, counties cannot start the laborious process until 7 a.m. on Election Day. For each of what might be tens of thousands of mail ballots, workers must open the outer envelopes, open the inner “security” envelopes, flatten the actual ballots, and then scan them.

The association supported a bill that would have let counties start the process seven days before an election — using scanning procedures that would not tabulate actual results. The bill passed the state House earlier this year on a party-line vote — all Democrats in favor and all Republicans opposed — and stalled in the Senate.

Senate Republican majority leader Joe Pittman of Indiana County said any discussion of changing election rules must include a voter ID requirement — a long-standing priority for his party.

The lack of pre-canvassing time is the prime source of the concern for Conklin.

Republicans, he said, know full well “they have set up a close election where it will take days to count the ballots.” That, Conklin said, will fuel election-rigging conspiracy theories. Adding pre-canvassing time before Election Day would simply be giving county election workers the thing they want most to make their task easier, he said.

Republican Sen. Cris Dush of Jefferson County is worried that court decisions and late-issued state election guidance will gum up county election processes. He pointed to an Aug. 30 ruling by Commonwealth Court that found it unconstitutional to disqualify voters who fail to include the date on mail ballots.

“If there is an appeal, they probably are going to have to separate those ballots,” said Dush, chairman of the Senate State Government Committee.

Meanwhile, a separate court ruling issued Thursday said voters can cast provisional ballots in place of mail ballots that have been rejected for less-serious mistakes made when they were returned. In yet another case, a judge ruled on Aug. 23 that Washington County violated state law when its election workers refused to tell voters that their mail ballots had been rejected and would not be counted in the April primary election.

On pre-canvassing, Dush proposed an approach where county election offices could send some of their thousands of mail ballots out to precincts for processing. Those locations, Dush said, typically have Republican and Democratic observers on hand, and having some of the processing done at them would save time, he said.

Beaver County director of elections Colin Sisk said it’s difficult to predict exactly how smoothly vote-counting will go on Nov. 5. But, he said, “We plan to have pretty healthy staffing when it comes to opening ballots and getting them scanned.”

The county has logged a lower number of mail ballot request this year than at the same point in 2020, he said.

Allegheny County already has received 150,000 mail ballot requests. There is an expectation the final total will be about 200,000.

In a newsletter notice posted late last month, the county said the makeup of the ballot typically is finalized and then mailed to voters about 25 days before Election Day.

Benyo, the Lehigh chief clerk, said a major boost for the counties since 2020 was provided by the “election integrity grant program” signed into law in 2022. Before that, the state did not provide money to counties to run elections.

The latest grant allocation to Allegheny County was $4.7 million. When the statewide program was approved, the first item on the list of permitted uses for grants was paying staff to process and count mail ballots.