Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Officials take steps for mail-in balloting
WEST CHESTER » The Chester County Board of Elections voted Tuesday to take a number of steps to make voting-by-mail more convenient and accessible for county residents in the upcoming November presidential election as it faces a wave of requests for such voting opportunities.
In a series of unanimous votes, the board members — county Commissioners’
Chairwoman Marian Moskowitz, Vice Chairman Josh Maxwell, and Commissioner Michelle Kichline — approved placing election ballot drop boxes at nearly a dozen locations across the county; opening up two “satellite” election offices to handle mail-in and absentee ballots; and arranging with West Chester University for space to count the ballots casts in what is expected to be a highturnout process.
In addition, county election officials described efforts they are making to ensure that there will be a sufficient number of polling places across the county to handle voting Nov. 3, even though some of the normal 211 polls will be unavailable for use because of the COVID-19 pandemic that is driving the new voting measures.
Lastly, the county said it will likely be able to staff all the open polling places with poll workers and staff, even as worries about the coronavirus continue to beset the county.
The moves drew praise from at least one voterrights activist who had criticized the county’s efforts to make things easy and accessible for voters during the June primary.
“I really feel very much more confident with the efforts you now have in place,” said Lani Frank of Easttown.
At the same time, the commissioners reacted to concerns that have been raised in the media about the election and how mailin ballots will affect not only pace of returns on Election Day, but also questions about security and voter confidence in the results.
Because of the large influx of mail-in ballots that cannot be processed until Election Day, final results from Pennsylvania as a whole, and Chester County in particular, will likely not be available until some time after Nov. 3, if the lessons of the primary hold true. Some speculate that Republicans, whose voters have been hesitant to vote by mail, may declare victory in the state based on early results that do not account for unprocessed mail-in ballot.
“It is my goal – and Chester County’s goal – to make sure every vote is counted,” said Moskowitz. “If that takes a few more days, that is what we will do.”
“It would be a failure of democracy should a winner be declared before all the votes are counted,” agreed Maxwell, with Kichline, the board’s lone Republican, declaring that “the election in Chester County will not be declared until every eligible vote is counted.
“We are preparing for an accurate, efficient and secure counting process, but given the number of mailin ballots that we are expecting, that result will not likely be declared until days after Nov. 3,” she said.
In response to President Donald Trump’s various pronouncements about mail-in voting being a prescription for election fraud, the board members unanimously defended the process.
“I feel very confident in the mail-in ballot system,” said Moskowitz. In the past 20 years there have been 1,110 criminal convictions of voter fraud nationally, and of those, only 143 involved mail-in ballots, noted Maxwell.
The county is anticipating a huge influx of mailin ballots because of voters concerns about going to vote for president, Congress and state offices in the midst of the global pandemic. Having additional drop boxes where voters can deliver their filled-in ballots without having to rely on the U.S. Postal Service will help engender trust that ballots are being counted properly, the board said in its resolutions authorized the measures.
Because of recent state
Supreme Court decisions regarding the presidential ballot, the county’s Office of Voter Services was able to draw up the final ballot for the November election and send it to be printed, said Acting Director Bill Tunrer and Assistant Director Alexis Barsamian during the virtual meeting Tuesday. The ballots would be ready to be mailed to those who have requested them by the end of tis week or early next week, they said.
According to county figures, of the 368,811 voters currently registered in the county, 125,194 voters, or 39% of the electorate, had requested mail-in or absentee ballots as of Tuesday. The majority of those — about 73,000 — were Democrats — while fewer than half that number — 29,651 — were Republicans.
The county expects as many as 200,000 mailin or absentee ballots requests by the deadline for doing so, which is Oct. 27. The last date to register to vote is Oct. 19.
Officials have suggested that voters mail their ballots as soon as they can after receiving them because of concerns about postal delivery that have arisen. But the county has also decided to make available drop boxes that would collect individual ballots and then physically deliver them to the Voters Services Offices at the Government Services Center in West Goshen on a routine daily basis.
The drop-box locations approved Tuesday include 10 of the county’s local libraries, from Avon Grove in the south to Phoenixville in the north, and Parkesburg in the west to Easttown in the east, as well as the county’s main library branch at Exton in West Whiteland.
The local libraries have morning and evening hours, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., on weekdays, and morning and afternoon hours, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. During those times, there will be a drop box supervised by a county employee to make sure it remains tamper free, who will then collect and deliver all of those ballots deposited each day, according to the board’s vote.
Two satellite offices were also established that will allow registered voters to request, receive, fill out, and deliver a mail-in ballot, making them effectively early voting locations. The locations are the Henrietta Hankin Library in West Vincent — the north end of the county — and the Oxford Public Library — in the south.
Those libraries are open six days a week, and will be staffed in the morning and evening.
West Chester University agreed to make its Ehinger Gymnasium available for the county to set up it election results processing operation beginning Nov. 3 to insure sufficient space for COVID-19 protections. The operation will run around the clock, with three daily eight-hour sessions, until the final results are posted.