费城会议中心将成为选举周二上午7点，该市的活动开始，数百名选举官员开始处理数十万份邮寄选票。
他们在宾夕法尼亚州最大城市——民主党的一个重要据点——的工作可能对决定下周谁赢得战场州以及随之而来的白宫至关重要。
在快速工作的压力下，官员们也受到了日程表的挤压，因为控制州立法机构的共和党人选择不允许县在选举前开始处理邮寄选票，而大多数其他州都是这样。
那个简略的时间表，法律挑战的可能性根据宾夕法尼亚州最高选举官员的说法，宾夕法尼亚州的选票数量庞大，今年首次允许通过邮件投票，这可能会使预计将持续到周五的投票计数复杂化。通过邮件投票的人数只因为冠状病毒大流行。周五，宾夕法尼亚创下了2398起每日最多病例的记录。根据国家卫生部的说法。
“很难达到人们的期望，”费城市专员丽莎·迪利(Lisa Deeley)告诉美国广播公司新闻，她是该市选举委员会的民主党人。“这对我们所有人来说都是新的，我们将尽最大努力尽快完成，但不牺牲准确性。”
他们的工作将受到密切关注。唐纳德·特朗普总统多次批评邮寄投票他在9月份与拜登的辩论中表示，费城“发生了糟糕的事情”，并敦促他的支持者“进入投票站，非常仔细地观察”
宾夕法尼亚州共和党人和特朗普竞选团队奠定基础发起一场积极的运动来挑战邮寄选票的列表，这可能会使该市选举官员的工作在11月3日之后成为两党之间的一个热点。一名共和党官员周五在与记者的电话中说，“数十人”已经被部署到宾夕法尼亚州“以监测那里的局势”。
“我认为每个人都担心宾夕法尼亚州，”全国公民和人权领导会议主席兼首席执行官瓦妮塔·古普塔告诉美国广播公司新闻。
加布里埃拉奥迪/法新社通过盖蒂图像
2020年10月7日，费城市政厅，人们排队投票。
费城计划如何计票
宾夕法尼亚人要求为大选投300多万张缺席票，截至周五，他们返回了200多万张缺席票。
在费城，官员们估计，他们可能需要处理选民要求的42.5万多张缺席选票中的35万多张。
从周二早上7点开始，官员们将开始按选区组织处理选票，并扫描签名。签名的选票将通过提取机，提取机有吸盘来打开信封，让工作人员可以取出内部保密信封中的选票。
根据9月份州最高法院的一项裁决，没有保密信封的选票，即裸选票，将被丢弃。但是投票工作人员可以联系选民，给他们临时选票，让他们亲自到投票站填写。
一旦从保密信封中取出并经过核实，选票就由工作人员展开，并准备由该市12台高速扫描仪处理，每小时可处理32000张选票。
迪利说，该市计划在周二晚上投票结束后，在选举日公布缺席和邮寄扫描的投票结果，并收到最后一台投票机的结果。
更新后的票数将在11月4日公布四次，在一周的剩余时间里每天至少公布两次，直到每张选票都被计算在内。
“我有信心，如果不是在星期五之前，压倒性的多数将被计算在内，”宾夕法尼亚联邦秘书凯西·布克瓦星期五对记者说。
马克·马科拉/盖蒂影像公司
在更早的出现在美国广播公司的“GMA 3”节目中，布克瓦说，该州最大的县将“每周7天、每天24小时”计票，以“尽可能快地”完成这一过程
尽管布克瓦给予了鼓励，但至少有七个县选择不在选举日上午开始计票过程，即所谓的预先拉票，并将于11月4日开始。
格林县专员委员会主席迈克·贝尔丁在一封电子邮件中告诉美国广播公司新闻，“我们要处理的不到5000件”。“我们的决定是基于县工作人员和投票站工作人员的可用性，并开始投票处理。”
“我们已经购买了信封开启器和高速扫描仪来帮助这个过程，”他继续说道。"我们关注的是程序、问责和投票的完整性."
六月小学的教训
费城是六月初选期间被大量邮件选票淹没的几个县之一，花了两周多的时间才最终确定结果。
迪利告诉美国广播公司新闻，自今年夏天以来，该市已经扩大了业务，增加了更多的工作人员，并购买了新的设备来处理大量的邮寄选票。
“50个人花了两天时间做的事情，我们将能够在几个小时内用我们购买的工业设备完成，”她说。
何塞·莫雷诺/费城问询报
“我相信我们正在尽一切努力应对一年前没有人预料到的雪崩，”无党派善治和公民领导组织70国委员会的主席兼首席执行官大卫·索恩伯格告诉美国广播公司新闻。
费城和其他县也将隔离从选举日晚上8点到11月6日收到的任何选票，以防选票的有效性在法庭上受到质疑。州共和党人试图让最高法院做出裁决，但没有成功但是法院并不排除未来的行动。
费城选举官员面临的另一大挑战是反对错误信息关于这个城市的选举过程，以及关于选民欺诈的误导性声明，专家们认为这是极其罕见的。
“作为一个小小的市政部门，很难与大量的错误信息作斗争，”费城市政专员、共和党人艾尔·施密特告诉美国广播公司新闻。“很难反击一条获得数千万或数亿人观看的推文，”他补充道。“我并不是只建议总统。”
施密特和其他选举官员已经利用社交媒体尽最大努力揭开投票过程的神秘面纱，尽管他们已经为下周开始的工作做好了准备。
“这不应该是我们所有时间都在做的事情，但同时，有时你不能让它没有答案，”他说。
Philadelphia prepares for 'avalanche' of mail-in ballots
The Philadelphia Convention Center will become the center ofelectionactivity in the city on Tuesday at 7 a.m., as hundreds of election officials start working to process hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots.
Their work in Pennsylvania's largest city -- a key Democratic stronghold -- could be crucial to determining who wins the battleground state next week, and with it, the White House.
Under pressure to work quickly, officials are also being squeezed by the calendar, after Republicans in control of the state legislature opted not to allow counties to begin processing mail-in ballots before the election, as is the case in most other states.
That abridged timeline,the potential for legal challengesand the sheer volume of mail in ballots in Pennsylvania -- which is allowing voting by mail for the first time this year -- could complicate a ballot count that is expected to continue until Friday, according to the state's top election official. The number of people voting by mail has only been exacerbated by thecoronavirus pandemic. Pennsylvania set a record for most daily cases on Friday with 2,398,according to the state department of health.
"It's very hard to be fast enough for people's expectations," Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley, a Democrat who leads the city's election board, told ABC News. "This is going to be new for all of us, and we're going to be doing the best we can to get it done as quickly as possible, but without sacrificing accuracy."
Their work will be watched closely. President Donald Trump, who hasrepeatedly criticized voting by mail, said "bad things happen" in Philadelphia in his September debate with Biden, and urged his supporters to "go into the polls and watch very carefully."
Pennsylvania Republicans and the Trump campaign arelaying the groundworkfor an aggressive campaign to challenge the tabulation of mail-in votes, which could make the work of election officials in the city a flashpoint between both parties after Nov. 3. "Dozens of people" have already been deployed to Pennsylvania "to monitor the situation there," a Republican official said on a call with reporters Friday.
"I think everyone is worried about Pennsylvania," Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the National Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told ABC News.
How Philadelphia plans to count votes
Pennsylvanians requested more than 3 million absentee ballots for the general election -- and returned more than 2 million as of Friday.
In Philadelphia, officials are estimating they could have to process more than 350,000 returned absentee ballots from the over 425,000 requested by voters.
Beginning at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, officials will begin processing the ballots, organized by precinct, and scanning them for signatures. Signed ballots will go through extraction machines, which have suction cups to open envelopes that allow staff to remove ballots in the inner secrecy envelopes.
Ballots without secrecy envelopes, known as naked ballots, will be discarded, in accordance with a September state Supreme Court ruling. But poll workers can reach out to voters and offer them provisional ballots to fill out at a polling site in-person.
Once removed from the secrecy envelopes and verified, ballots are unfolded by staff and prepared for processing by the city's 12 high-speed scanners, which can process 32,000 ballots every hour.
The city plans to post the results of the absentee and mail-in ballots scanned on Election Day after polls close on Tuesday night, and the last voting machine results are received, Deeley said.
Updated counts will be posted four times on Nov. 4, and at least twice a day the rest of the week until every vote is counted.
"I feel confident that the overwhelming majority will be counted by Friday, if not before," Kathy Boockvar, the Pennsylvania secretary of the commonwealth, told reporters on Friday.
Inan earlier appearanceon ABC's "GMA 3," Boockvar said the state's largest counties will count ballots "24/7" to finish the process "as quickly as humanly possible."
At least seven counties are opting not to begin the process of counting mail ballots, known as pre-canvassing, on the morning of Election Day, despite Boockvar's encouragements, and will start on Nov. 4.
"We have fewer than 5,000 to process," Mike Belding, chairman of the Greene County Commissioners, told ABC News in an email. "Our decision is based on county staff and availability of people to work both the polls and start ballot processing."
"We have purchased an envelope opener and a high-speed scanner to aid in this process," he continued. "We are focused on procedures, accountability and integrity of the vote."
Lessons learned from June primary
Philadelphia was one of several counties overwhelmed by the influx of mail ballots during the June primary, taking more than two weeks to finalize results.
Deeley told ABC News the city has expanded its operation since this summer, adding more staff and purchasing new equipment to handle the flood of mail-in ballots.
"What it took 50 people two days to do, we are going to be able to do in a matter of hours with the industrial equipment we purchased," she said.
"I'm confident that we're doing what it takes to respond to this avalanche that nobody anticipated a year ago," David Thornburgh, the president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan good governance and civic leadership organization, told ABC News.
Philadelphia and other counties will also segregate any ballots received from 8 p.m. on Election Day to Nov. 6, in case the validity of the ballots is challenged in court. State Republicansunsuccessfully tried to get the Supreme Court to ruleon the extended ballot deadline before Tuesday, but the court did not rule out future action.
Another big challenge for election officials in Philadelphia isfighting misinformationabout the election process in the city, along with misleading claims about voter fraud, which experts described as exceedingly rare.
"It's hard to combat a lot of misinformation when you're one, small municipal department," Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, told ABC News. "It's hard to fight back against a tweet that gets tens of millions, or hundreds of millions, of people who see it," he added. "And I'm not suggesting just the president."
Schmidt and other election officials have taken to social media to demystify the voting process as best they can, even as they ready for their work to begin next week.
"It shouldn't be what we spend all our time doing, but at the same time, sometimes you can't let it go unanswered," he said.
