After efficient county primary, officials prepare for November
Touting their vote counting effort that quickly finalized the results of last month’s primaries, Allegheny County officials say they’re already preparing for the November general election — a contest that will elicit even more pressure and attention as the nation anticipates the winner of the presidency.
But county election officials, in interviews this past week, described a situation in which they can only prepare for things in their control. What’s out of their control, they said, is whether November’s election will be a traditional precinct-first process, or if COVID-19’s impacts on in-person interactions will derail their plans again and significantly increase the use of mail-in ballots.
More than 67% of votes cast in the June 2 primary were submitted through the mail, an influx of paperwork that threatened to muck up the county’s count and severely strain their operations. But officials were able to tally 209,000 mail-in and absentee ballots by the end of election night, and finished the total count by the following afternoon — a pace that was praised by members of both political parties.
“Was that luck, was it providence, or was it planning? Maybe a little bit of all the above,” said Jerry Tyskiewicz, the director of administrative services who is part of the elections management group. “But we felt that we were well positioned going into the election — not knowing we were going to get that many ballots at the precinct level...-[instead of] mainly through the mail.”
While other jurisdictions across Pennsylvania had a tougher time putting out primary results in a timely manner, Allegheny County had the staffing and the equipment to count faster, officials said. In their election night warehouse, they had eight ballot scanners up and running. They plan to use 10 in November.
November’s effort will also take more staffing, said Deputy Manager Steve Pilarski, and the more people they have, the more “we can [keep] those 10 machines running ... all day long” and the quicker results will be made available.
Raining on the parade
But their success will also depend on the sheer volume of mail-in and absentee ballots they receive, officials said. Mr. Tyskiewicz, who acknowledged he was “[raining] on the parade just a little bit,” said that if the county were to receive twice as many ballots by mail in November as they got in the primary — ballots that they’re not permitted to open and start tallying until 7 a.m. on Election Day — it will be “very difficult to get through” the counting process in a timely manner, even with more staff.
“It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be very difficult,” Mr. Tyskiewicz said.
The election managers labeled the primary a good enough trial run, and said that even if there had been a serious contested presidential primary in either party, the process wouldn’t have looked much different. The county had done several mock runs, said Elections Division Deputy Manager Chet Harhut, and knew exactly how long it would take to open the quantity of ballots.
Plus, the primary turnout far exceeded — and practically doubled — what they had originally expected, similar to what a contested presidential primary would have looked like, they said.
“We were planning for a 22% turnout and when we saw the applications for the mail-ins and the absentees coming in by the bucket load, we knew we were going to see that 20%,” Elections Manager Dave Voye said.”I don’t think any of us thought that we would see 40 [percent].”
Budget Manager Adam Lentz said the June 2 contests cost more than a typical primary, specifically pointing to the increased cost of printing and mailing ballots. But in some other facets, it was cheaper, Mr. Voye said, pointing to the county not having to haul voting machines to 1,300 polling locations or pay 6,600 poll workers.
Even so, the county did not receive enough funding from the federal government, said Mr. Lentz. How they’d use more funding ahead of November is to be determined, Mr. Pilarski added, but he said it would likely be put toward additional staffing.
Time to pre-canvass
Mr. Voye said it would help if the state Legislature, before November, would act to give counties more time to pre-canvass mail-in and absentee ballots, as well as move forward the deadline for voters to apply for them. That, Mr. Voye said, would give his department more time to send the ballots and give voters more time to return them.
Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Evanto said his department monitored social media posts during the primary and identified some areas they’d like to improve on, in terms of public education and outreach. Much of the strategy will remain the same, he said, and include advertising in print, on TV and radio, on billboards and on social media.
“This, without a doubt, is the largest marketing effort that the county has ever undertaken — when you combine the primary election and the general election,” Mr. Evanto said.
The county will ramp up its advertising in September and October to a point where it’s “going to be hard to get away from us if you live in Allegheny County,” Mr. Evanto said.
But holding in-person voting machine demonstrations — which were canceled ahead of the primary — is still to be decided.
“We will do a lot of advertising, but I don’t think there’s any substitute for getting these ballots ... in front of people and actually letting them touch them and see them and use them,” Mr. Evanto said, “and I think that we lost a lot [during the primary] because we weren’t able to do that.”
Mr. Tyskiewicz said November’s election will be a replay of the primary, and that with so much uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, the county will have to prepare for many different possibilities.
“Just trying to judge all that on the fly — not knowing what the future brings — is part of the challenge,” he said.