With just five days left until Pennsylvania’s primary election, Allegheny County Election Manager David Voye delivered a positive report, citing fully staffed polling locations, smooth mail-in ballot operations and success at six new ballot drop-off sites countywide.
At the county’s elections warehouse on the North Side, staff on Thursday afternoon oversaw the delivery and preparation of voting materials and the processing of mail-in ballots.
In the coming days, officials will run the 67,865 mail-in and absentee ballots the county has already received through a mail sorting machine, which catalogs, date stamps and categorizes them before they are locked away in a secure cage until 7 a.m. Tuesday, when pre-canvassing can begin.
“Starting here at 7 a.m. on Election Day, we’ll start opening ... ballots,” Mr. Voye said.
“So they’ll come in these envelopes, they stay in the envelopes until 7 a.m. on Election Day and then this will be filled with county workers who start taking 100,000 ballots out of envelopes.”
As of Thursday, the county had processed 121,712 mail-in ballot applications, 99,343 of which were from Democrats and 22,369 of which were from Republicans; 67,865 ballots have been returned thus far, and Mr. Voye estimated the county will have received more than 100,000 by Tuesday.
The director stood under large flat-screen monitors, each displaying a camera feed of a different part of the warehouse for observers to watch on election day. The warehouse has 90 cameras to monitor each step of the process.
At a table nearby, election staff members were busy checking mail-in ballots for mistakes. If a mail-in ballot has a mistake, such as an incorrect date or a missing signature, it is sent back to the voter to be corrected through a process called ballot curing. County election officials aim to get mistaken ballots back to voters within the same day they are received. Voters are notified by email that their ballot had a mistake.
The rules for ballot curing differ across Pennsylvania's 67 counties due to a vague section of election code that gives county officials a long leash for determining which ballot mistakes they will or will not allow voters to correct. In Allegheny County, voters are notified of, and allowed to fix, incorrect dates and missing or misspelled names.
“Something that we’re proud of is we sent back over 1,100 so far that weren’t properly cast,” said Chet Harhut, deputy manager of the Elections Division of Allegheny County.
Mr. Harhhut said Thursday that incorrect dates are “by far the most common mistake.” This primary season, mail-in ballots are all being scanned as “pending,” which allows for an email to be sent to voters as soon as a ballot hits the warehouse, and quickly notifies them if they have made a mistake.
If a voter needs to correct a mistake on their ballot, but won’t have time to mail it back to the elections division before Tuesday, they have two options, Mr. Harhut said.
Voters can either drop off their corrected ballot at one of the county’s seven return locations this weekend, drop it off at the county office building on April 22 and 23, or bring the mistaken ballot to their polling place for surrender so they can cast a vote in person.
“They’ll give you a new ballot to vote on election day, you cannot drop off a voted ballot at the poll,” Mr. Voye clarified.
This weekend, the county election office plans to make a list to notify voters who need to correct their ballot in-person on Monday or Tuesday, but won’t have time to mail it back before election day, Mr. Harhut said.
Every polling location in the county will be fully staffed on election day. The county has reached its target of 6,875 poll workers, which means all 1,327 in-person precincts will have at least five volunteers on election day, officials said.
Allegheny County’s high volunteer turnout is partly due to a statewide program that allows 17-year-old high school students to volunteer as poll workers in exchange for class credit. Of the 6,785 poll workers this cycle, 148 are high school students. Each precinct must have three volunteers to operate, which is enough to have one judge and one majority and minority inspector, but five or more is ideal to ensure seamless operations.
There were 62 precinct locations moved for this election — 16 because of the primary’s intersection with the first day of the Jewish Passover holiday. The county sent notifications to every affected household, and voters will find notices posted outside with directions to their new location, officials said.
Six staffed ballot drop-off locations, which are new to the county this election cycle, opened for the first time on April 13 and 14. They will open again on April 20 and 21, and the county office building will act as a seventh drop-off location until the primary. Voters returned a total of 947 ballots over the two-day span, according to an update from officials at the April 15 Board of Election meeting.
The success of the sites, enacted by the board after weeks of in-fighting and brief litigation, was praised by board members at Monday’s meeting. Member Sam DeMarco, who chairs the County Council Republican caucus, said observers of the sites were “very happy and pleased with the professionalism and the hard work of the elections employees.”
Primary preparations aren’t just limited to Allegheny County. The Pennsylvania Department of State is hosting informational livestreams every day until the election with the goal of bolstering transparency. Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt hosted the first stream on Monday evening.
Mr. Schmidt explained the logic and accuracy testing counties have been performing on their voting systems to ensure they are correctly recording voter selections in each race. The state’s new election threats and security task force, led by Mr. Schmidt, is working with law enforcement and election officials on local, state and federal levels to “monitor the threat environment leading up to the primary.”
The livestreams can be viewed on the Department of State’s Facebook page, or live at pacast.com/live/dos.
First Published: April 19, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: April 20, 2024, 7:35 p.m.