Why Philadelphia's results may take a while Tuesday night, and how the mail ballot count works

Philadelphia votes Tuesday, Nov. 3, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. If you are waiting for results that night, expect the mail ballot count to take time. Pennsylvania law doesn't let counties start processing mail ballots before Election Day, so in Philadelphia that work starts when polls open and continues around the clock until it is done, Metro Philadelphia reported.

Our Saturday guide covers polling places, drop-off sites and the two charter questions on every city ballot. This story covers what happens to your ballot after you hand it in.

How the count works

According to Metro's Oct. 29 tour of the city's election warehouse on Roosevelt Boulevard:

• Returned mail ballots are date-stamped by machine, sorted by ward and division, and stored in a fenced, secured area of the 229,000-square-foot warehouse.
• Starting at 7 a.m. Tuesday, workers open outer and inner envelopes with extraction machines, then flatten the ballots for scanners.
• Damaged ballots or ballots with errors are pulled out and examined separately.
• As of Thursday, more than 86,000 mail ballots had come back, about two-thirds of those sent out. There are 685 polling places.

City Commissioner Seth Bluestein has argued for "pre-canvassing," which would let staff open envelopes and pull out ballots before Election Day "so the results can be ready to go as soon as polls close," CBS Philadelphia reported. That change would take an act of the state legislature, not City Council.

If you still have a mail ballot

• It must arrive by 8 p.m. Tuesday. A postmark doesn't count. Use a city drop box or satellite election office; the city's election guide lists them.
• To vote in person instead, bring the whole mail ballot packet to your polling place so it can be voided. Without it, you will vote by provisional ballot, the guide says.
• Check your polling place at atlas.phila.gov/voting.

Federal monitors

The U.S. Justice Department plans to send monitors to Philadelphia and three other Pennsylvania counties, WESA reported. A department letter says the monitors "only observe and take notes" and will wear business-casual clothes without identifying pins. Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt has said they have no greater access to polling places than the public and no power to police voters, WESA reported. Our explainer covers the rules.

What our records add

Elections are run by the three elected City Commissioners: Omar Sabir, the chair; Lisa Deeley; and Seth Bluestein. Council's role is to fund the office and to write any Charter questions that go on the ballot. This year it wrote two:

• Question 1, on city contracting, began as Resolution 260467 and Bill 260457, which passed 16-0.
• Question 2, making the arts and culture office permanent, came from Bill 260264-A, which passed 17-0.

What's next

Counting continues after Tuesday until every valid ballot is tallied. Military and overseas ballots can arrive until Nov. 10 if they were submitted by 11:59 p.m. on Nov. 3, according to the commissioners' 2026 voter calendar. We will report the charter question results when the count is complete. Council's next session is Nov. 12.