No county in Pennsylvania counts its votes as efficiently as Allegheny, and officials expect it to stay that way for the general election on Nov. 5.

At Tuesday’s Board of Elections meeting, officials said they were on track to count mail-in ballots by 8 p.m. on Election Day, the time the polls close.

Sam DeMarco, an at-large County Council member who is on the three-member board, was pleased with the update.

“We set the bar and standards for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and I want us to stay that way,” said DeMarco, a Republican from North Fayette.

After mail-in ballots are counted and tabulated at 8 p.m., in-person votes come rolling in and take a few hours to tally.

That isn’t always the case in Pennsylvania’s other 66 counties.

Several have struggled over the years since no-excuse, mail-in voting was established in 2020. Many take hours, sometimes days, to count mail-in ballots.

Last year, Allegheny County had all of its mail-in votes tabulated 18 seconds after the polls closed, thanks to an all-hands-on-deck approach initiated by Allegheny County managers.

Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, a Democrat and election board member, said she is proud of the county’s election division and the work it has put in over the years.

Elections Manager David Voye noted that total registration for the county stands at over 943,000 voters, marginally higher than 2020 totals. That number should increase by a few thousand thanks to late-arriving registrations that came in just before Monday’s deadline.

Voye said more than 228,000 people have requested mail-in ballots in Allegheny County, and more than 142,000 of those ballots have already been returned. Over 6,700 people have voted at Allegheny County’s satellite voting centers in Oakland, Homewood, South Park and North Park.

Satellite voting centers in Homewood, South Park, North Park and Downtown Pittsburgh are open again this weekend.

“Elections are something that we alone administer, and it is at a significant cost,” said Innamorato. “We are proud of the infrastructure we have built.”

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