YORK, Pa. – Mail ballots that arrive in Pennsylvania election offices up to three days after the election are not expected to change the results of the election, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said Thursday.
Some smaller counties reported receiving zero ballots, and some larger ones have received about 500 the day after Election Day. That's not many, Boockvar said.
Under the three-day extension, which was being challenged in court, mail ballots with the Nov. 3 postmarked can arrive in local election offices until 5 p.m. EST Friday. President Donald Trump's campaign has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Those ballots are being segregated.
"Unless it's super close, I don't see them making or breaking this one way or another," Boockvar said during an interview on CNN.
Boockvar also said the majority of votes in Pennsylvania are expected to be counted today and a winner could be called Thursday. In the past, she had indicated she expected the majority of the counting to be finished by Friday.
"It's looking like we're ahead of schedule," she said.
She said about 550,000 ballots that are still in the process of being counted.
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Trump's campaign is pursuing a few legal battles in Pennsylvania. It moved to intervene in last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision letting stand a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that upheld a three-day extension of the deadline to receive mail ballots. The extension was not part of voting regulations enacted by Pennsylvania lawmakers last year.
Absentee and mail ballots received after the polls closed in Pennsylvania on Tuesday were to be segregated from those received earlier to allow for court challenges.
In another Pennsylvania case, a Republican congressional candidate withdrew a claim filed on Election Day alleging officials with the Montgomery County Board of Elections, near Philadelphia, improperly opened and inspected mail ballots received before Tuesday.
The case had been filed on behalf of candidate Kathy Barnette, a U.S. military veteran and author. It claimed those officials gave some voters whose ballots had errors that would have invalidated their votes an opportunity to "cure" them and file provisional ballots on Election Day.
The suit sought a temporary restraining order against the county that could have spoiled about 93 ballots. But on Thursday, court documents filed on behalf of Barnette said a restraining order at this point "will be ineffective in addressing the matters covered."
Follow reporter Teresa Boeckel on Twitter: @teresaboeckel
Contributing: Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY; Chris Ullery, Bucks County Courier Times
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This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Pennsylvania mail ballots arriving in 3-day window not 'make or break'