Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said Friday she will not order a recount or a recanvass of statewide election returns in any of the 67 counties, because no candidate was defeated by the slim margin required to trigger a recount — half of 1% or less.
That includes the races for president, attorney general, auditor general and state treasurer, Boockvar said in a news release.
The counties have not yet finished their ballot canvassing but are nearing completion, Boockvar said. They are still counting the 100,000 or so provisional ballots and 28,000 military and overseas ballots that were among the 6.8 million votes cast. As of Friday, about 40,000 provisional ballots were counted, the release noted.
State law requires county election boards to adjudicate each provisional ballot by verifying the voter was registered to vote in the precinct in which the ballot was cast, and that the voter did not cast a mail-in ballot before requesting a provisional one at a polling place.
About 10,000 mailed ballots were received between Election Day and 5 p.m. last Friday, the release said. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in September that counties should count those ballots as long as they were postmarked by 8 p.m. Election Day.
Boockvar said there are not enough outstanding ballots to affect her decision about recounts.
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