Voting test run
Officials will learn a lot from primary vote by mail
The campaign to encourage Pennsylvania voters to request mail-in ballots for the June 2 primary election has already resulted in more than 1 million registered voters asking for ballots. Along the way, elections officials are learning that even a mail-in system is not without challenges, and those must be addressed before the November presidential election.
In Allegheny County, which has already processed about 180,000 absentee or mail-in ballot requests, officials have had to deal with a problem of duplicate ballots being mailed because of a glitch in processing batches of mailing labels. Elections officials said they have corrected the problem and that bar codes on the ballots will prevent any voter from having more than one ballot counted. Officials need to continue their vigilance in identifying and correcting that problem.
Since the county opted to send applications for a mail-in ballot to all registered voters, there is also the issue of ballot applications going to deceased people who have not been removed from registration rolls. Those registration rolls need to be reviewed and purged before November’s election to limit the possibility of voter fraud.
In many ways, the primary election will be a test run for mail-in voting in the presidential race, so the time between the primary and general election must not be squandered. It is a period during which officials must correct shortcomings and review lessons learned.
The University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security released a report citing the need for counties to take “bold action” to prepare for the November election. Among the suggestions were sending registered voters an application for a mail-in ballot, providing adequate protective and sanitary equipment at polling places and recruiting poll workers who aren’t as vulnerable to the coronavirus as many of the longtime — and elderly — volunteers who normally handle the jobs.
All are commonsense suggestions that should be implemented statewide. Since there is no telling what the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic will be in November, it’s likely that mail-in voting will be a popular option again for voters who want to avoid a trip to the polling places.
Those who want to vote in person, however, should not be denied that opportunity and every effort must be made to keep voters and poll workers safe during the voting process. Increased mail-in voting will mean fewer people going to the polls, thus the need for fewer polling places and fewer poll workers, all positive measures in stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
The June 2 primary will reveal a lot about the state’s new mail-in ballot option. Election officials should be prepared for even more requests to vote by mail in November.