Fact-check: Do only Democratic cities take days to count their votes?

Our weekly check-in with the Texas Truth-O-Meter.

By Louis Jacobson and Amy Sherman, PolitiFactNovember 2, 2022 1:15 pm, ,

From PolitiFact: 

Hoping to proactively rebut misinformation about the reliability of midterm election results, election officials are warning voters not to expect complete results on election night. They say that in many cases, ballots will still be counted in many states days later.

In a tweet, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, singled out Democratic-led cities for ballot-counting delays.

“Why is it only Democrat blue cities that take ‘days’ to count their votes? The rest of the country manages to get it done on election night,” Cruz tweeted Oct. 27, drawing more than 20,000 likes and retweets.

Cruz linked to a New York Post article that said Pennsylvania’s top elections official cautioned that official results in the races for U.S. Senate and governor won’t be available on election night.

Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Leigh Chapman said that a state law doesn’t allow election officials to start opening mail ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. The Republican-led General Assembly unanimously passed an election law in March 2020 that included that start time for processing mail ballots. Months earlier, the state passed Act 77, which stated that any voter could cast a ballot by mail.

Ballot counting has lagged in some cities, which in today’s polarized electoral environment are heavily Democratic. But Cruz’s statement is misleading in multiple ways.

We contacted a spokesperson for Cruz to ask whether he had additional evidence beyond the article the tweet linked to. The spokesperson provided no further evidence.

Read the full story at PolitiFact, and listen to an interview with PolitiFact Texas’ Nusaiba Mizan in the audio player above.

Radio interview produced by Sean Saldana

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