Since the 2020 election, officials and voting rights advocates have repeatedly urged state lawmakers to make fixes to the 2019 law, known as Act 77, that ushered in no-excuse mail voting.

The County Commissioners Association, for instance, has asked for several clarifications. Topping the list: the ability to begin processing mail ballots earlier, a task known in election circles as pre-canvassing. It involves opening the envelopes that contain the ballots, unfolding the ballots, and prepping them for counting.

Under current law, counties are not permitted to pre-canvass until the morning of Election Day, which prolongs the time frame for tallying the final vote. In 2020, Trump and his supporters used the lengthy vote count to falsely claim that, as mail ballots were counted and the vote totals favored Biden, that fraud had occurred.

Counties also want the law to provide clarity on providing drop boxes and dealing with flawed mail ballots. Some counties, for instance, proactively contact voters whose ballots are missing a signature or date, or have some other defect, to allow them to fix it.

Several bills have been introduced to make those changes, largely by Democrats, but Republicans who control the state Senate have made it clear that any changes to the state’s election law need to include expanded voter ID requirements and other fixes.

But politics have sunk those efforts.

“We can’t even do things we agree on,” said state Sen. Sharif Street (D., Philadelphia), who in the last legislative session introduced a bill with his colleague Dave Argall (R., Schuylkill) proposing changes they believed had widespread support. It ultimately did not advance.

“The purpose was to make government work better,” said Street, who chairs Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party. “But just doing good-government maintenance in the Donald Trump era is no longer an acceptable thing.”

In the absence of legislative action, the Shapiro administration has taken steps to minimize mail ballot confusion. Late last year, officials announced redesign changes to help voters more easily understand the proper way to fill them out.

“It is absolutely awful to stand there with trays of votes that were cast by eligible, registered voters who made a fatal defect in casting the vote - and not being able to count that vote,” said Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s top election official.