97,000 Allegheny County Ballots Still Not Returned With Election Day Around The Corner

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - A steady stream of voters filed into the Allegheny County office building Friday to personally drop off their ballots. Richard Kim drove in from Wexford just to make sure his will be counted.

"I just got my mail-in ballot and figured there isn't enough time to put in the mail, so I figure I'd drop it off," he said.

But as of today, many other ballots have yet to arrived at the Allegheny County elections warehouse. Of the 413,254 ballot applications approved in the county, 315,589 have been returned, leaving 97,665 outstanding with less than five days to go.

"At this late date, as we sit here on Friday afternoon, I would not trust the mail to be able to get it there by 8 p.m. Tuesday night," said Sam DeMarco, Allegheny County Elections board member.

And those voters are being urged to come down to the drop-off site or wait to take their ballot, declaration envelop and secrecy envelop to their regular polling place on Tuesday and vote in-person.

"All three things -- give it to the judge of elections, the judge of elections will void your ballot, or spoil your ballot as they call it, and give you another ballot with which you can vote that day," said Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

But in a close election, if a large percentage of those mail-in applicants don't vote at all, that could be worrisome for Biden supporters who have embraced mail-in voting in greater numbers than Trump supporters.

A recent Quinnipiac University Poll showed that 79% of mail-in or absentee voters support Biden and only 13% support President Trump. Conversely, 32% of those who plan to vote on Election Day support Biden and 63% are Trump supporters.

According to those figures, Trump may well be leading on Election Night, but the race would tighten in subsequent days as the mail-in votes are counted. Democratic pundit Joe Mistick says more Democrats are now deciding to wait to vote in-person.

"Because they've heard Donald Trump. Donald Trump said 'I'm going to come out strong on Election Day with in-person voting,' and so they've decide to try and blunt that. That's what we're hearing and we think that will constitute a fair number of those outstanding ballots," he said.