Pennsylvania is still counting its votes. Vox has live results.

Amanda Northrop/Vox

The state is critical in the presidential election.

Pennsylvania could close the doors on Donald Trump’s hopes for a second term, but the votes are still being counted, leaving the outcome unclear after Election Day.

This is not so unusual, to be clear: It has been common in US elections, including recent ones, for states to take several days or longer to count their votes.

But in Pennsylvania, the Republican state legislature all but guaranteed the outcome would not be known on Election Night by refusing to come to a deal with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf that would allow local election officials to start counting the early vote and mail-in ballots before the day of the election.

So while Trump has now falsely claimed the delay in counting mail ballots is evidence of fraud, it’s a situation specifically engineered by Pennsylvania Republicans. Whatever the president might claim, the results are still being tabulated, with local election officials promising the public that every legitimately cast vote will be counted.

With Trump winning the biggest prizes in the Sun Belt — Florida and Texas — Pennsylvania’s importance became more and more evident over the course of election night. The state awards 20 votes in the Electoral College. Trump won it by less than 50,000 votes against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The Electoral College math for Joe Biden has always been fairly simple: If he could flip Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and every other state voted the same way it did in 2016, he would win the presidency. Biden still has a chance to flip some Trump 2016 states (Arizona and Georgia are looking like the likeliest candidates), but the Rust Belt was his clearest path to the White House.

However, it must be emphasized: The vote count in Pennsylvania could take several days. Election officials in some cities say they will start their count back up again on Wednesday morning.

Pennsylvania is also the most likely battleground for legal challenges to the vote, with Republicans signaling on election night that they would sue to stop votes from being counted.

Political observers have been preaching patience in watching the election results in Pennsylvania. With the presidential election coming down to a handful of states, that advice looks prescient now. Check back here for the latest updates.