Generally speaking, all states have finished tallying the votes from the November 2, 2010 election. This year, every state that had a U.S. Senate election, or a gubernatorial election, has reported write-in results for at least some offices (except for the five states that ban all write-in votes), except for Pennsylvania and Washington. Some states report the number of write-in votes for declared write-in candidates. Some states report the total number of miscellaneous write-ins. Some states do both.
Pennsylvania’s Elections Department said several weeks ago that it is working on a write-in tally for the November 2010 election, but that eight counties still had not reported their write-ins. The issue has legal significance, because a federal lawsuit is pending in Pennsylvania for failure to tally the write-in votes for Cynthia McKinney (Green Party presidential nominee in 2008) and for the failure of certain counties to count any write-in votes in 2008. The lawsuit argues that the 2008 failures are typical and ongoing.
Pennsylvania has no law requiring a write-in candidate to file a declaration of candidacy. Under Pennsylvania law, all write-ins must be counted and reported.