Marc Meredith and Michael Morse:

The latest update from [Oct. 31]— after the general statewide deadline to request a mail ballot — shows there were 2,193,578 mail ballot applications ever approved. Of those, 1,622,675 have been logged by local election officials as returned, which means about a quarter are still outstanding.

Of the returned mail ballots, 5,059 would not count under current law: 2,050 are unsigned, 2,254 are misdated or undated, and 755 are naked.

Furthermore, in some counties, the data shows that voters who previously returned deficient mail ballots have already been able to correct the errors. Voters have fixed 1,151 mail ballots that had signature errors, 1,846 that had date errors and 347 that were naked.

Importantly, the latest mail ballot data is more up to date in some counties than in others. In general, Pennsylvania forbids counties from opening up mail ballots before Election Day. However, counties can engage in what is known as “pre-canvassing” — identifying mail ballots with deficient affidavits or missing secrecy envelopes without opening them, since the affidavits are on the outside of the mail ballot return envelopes.