Election results in Pennsylvania may not be known today as counting goes on, governor says

As the counting of the millions of ballots continues the day after the election, results might not be available even today, Gov. Tom Wolf said.

"In fact, a lot of the county election officials worked late into the night, and we still have work to do," he said during a news conference Wednesday morning.

Nearly 1.4 million mail-in and absentee ballots remained to be counted as of 10:10 a.m., according to the state's website. It's taking longer than in the past when most of the votes were cast in-person at the polls, the governor said.

"So we may not know the results even today, but the most important thing is we have accurate results — again even if that takes a little longer than we're used to," he said.

President Donald Trump falsely claimed early Wednesday morning that he has won the election, even though the ballots are being counted. Wolf, who said democracy is being tested in this election, assured Pennsylvanians that it will be a fair election, and it "will be free of outside influences."

"We all will vigorously defend against any attempt to attack that vote in Pennsylvania," Wolf said. 

Watch for updated counts throughout the day

Voters can watch the state's dashboard to see how many results have come in, and how many ballots remain to be counted.

"You're going to see a lot of updates in the next couple of hours and throughout the day," Boockvar said. 

Ballots that are postmarked Nov. 3 but arrive in the elections office Wednesday through Friday will have to be segregated, Boockvar said. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that they can be counted, but it could revisit the Republican Party's challenge on the three-day extension.

The vote count is never done on election night, Boockvar said.

Next Tuesday is the deadline for overseas and military ballots, she said.

Boockvar has estimated that counties will have counted the overwhelming majority of ballots by the Friday.

More:Election 2020: Pennsylvania election ran 'remarkably smoothly,' state officials say

More:Election 2020: Cookies, QAnon, a dog and a drag queen make for a weird end to the election

More:Pennsylvania presidential race can't be called on Election Day: Why it's taking so long

Why some counties are showing zero mail ballots counted 

The state's dashboard was showing this morning that more than a dozen counties haven't counted any mail ballots yet. Several counties had said they would wait until the day after the election to count the mail ballots.

Boockvar said sometimes counties are uploading results on their own websites but haven't transmitted the file to the Pennsylvania Department of State. She suggested checking a county's website for results.

Her department will be following up with counties to make sure the state receives the files, she said.

The state website is itemizing the ballots by in-person, mail and provisional. When some counties uploaded the results, it merged the two types into one. It was formatted wrong, so officials are working to make sure the actual attribution of the ballots are right, Boockvar said.