An hour after polls closed, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said today’s midterm primary election ran smoothly with few issues reported by counties.
Jon Ferreras
HARRISBURG, Pa. — An hour after the polls closed across Pennsylvania Tuesday night, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt held a news conference with a post-election update.
“Pennsylvania held a free, fair and safe election again,” Schmidt stated from Capitol Media Center.
Schmidt thanked election officials and the 45,000 poll workers who, he said, helped make the day successful.
Voters cast their ballots at more than 9,000 precincts across 67 counties.
This primary, 854,000 voters requested mail-in ballots and as of 8:00 p.m., 77% of those ballots have been returned to local county Board of Elections offices.
“Every vote is precious and your vote matters,” Schmidt said.
The Secretary of the Commonwealth also mentioned Tuesday morning’s incident in Catasauqua, Lehigh County, where an explosive device was thrown near a local polling place inside Salem United Church of Christ.
Schmidt explained that the Department of State has been in contact with Pennsylvania State Police who say the device being detonated was not related to the polling place or primary election and that voting continued uninterrupted.
While unofficial results will begin to populate, official results will still take a few weeks to be certified.
As unofficial results come in, they will be posted on the Department’s elections return site at electionreturns.pa.gov.