County agrees to pay mail-in ballot postage
The Berks County Board of Elections on Wednesday made two significant decisions involving mail ballots that could impact voters in upcoming elections.
The board approved having the county cover the cost of postage for mail ballots and gave the greenlight to adding a third ballot drop box location where voters can deposit their completed mail ballots.
Commissioner Kevin Barnhardt, chairman of the elections board, said he has been hearing from voters who want the county to cover postage for mail ballots ever since their widespread use began in 2020. He suggested this month that the county consider it.
Young voters in particular, he said, are not accustomed to having stamps on hand because they tend to do most of their communication and business online. He also cited an issue that arose last fall where hefty ballots necessitated more than one stamp.
To help ease that burden, Barnhardt suggested the county consider taking advantage of a U.S. Postal Service option called Business Reply Mail. That would mean the county pays the postage fee only for ballots that voters mail to the county and not for ones that are sent to voters but not returned.
“Voters are customers and we are in the customer service business, so we have to make it as easy as possible for people to vote,” he said. “This is fundamental
to what we do, and I know many other counties do this.
“It certainly shouldn’t be a financial thing because we spend probably over $3 million to run elections on an annual basis, and a couple thousand dollars to make this more seamless for the voter I think is incumbent upon us to consider.”
Commissioners Chairman Christian Leinbach initially responded by saying he doesn’t understand why the county would want to take on this additional cost. But, he said, he wanted to hear the opinion of his fellow Republican on the board before making a final decision. Commissioner Michael Rivera sided with Barnhardt.
Rivera said he spoke with elections director Paige Riegner ahead of the meeting to get an estimate on how much the proposal would cost the county and
feels comfortable taking on an additional $8,000 to $10,000 expense to provide postage.
In the end, Leinbach was swayed toward supporting the motion, and it passed with a unanimous vote.
Ballot drop box
The second important decision made by the board was to install a ballot drop box at the county’s new South Campus in Mohnton in time for the November election.
The county currently offers two drop boxes in the weeks leading up to an election for those wanting to hand deliver their mail ballot: one at the Berks County Services Center in downtown Reading and one at the Berks County Agriculture Center in Bern Township.
Riegner added her support to the proposal. She told the board that she expects the election department will have a functioning satellite office at the Mohnton facility by the fall.
All three commissioners voted to approve the motion.
They also agreed to make all three drop boxes available on the Sunday before an election, a move the commissioners said was done to give voters an extra opportunity to submit their ballots. Undated ballot update The commissioners failed to take action on a request by the Pennsylvania Department of State to certify undated mail ballots received during the primary election.
Mail ballots submitted statewide by voters that did not include a date on the outside envelope have been the subject of a court battle.
Riegner said Berks received 645 such ballots, with 507 cast by Democrats and 138 by Republicans.
A Commonwealth Court judge issued an order this month instructing counties to submit two separate vote counts to the state: one with the undated mail ballots and one without. It is unclear if the undated votes will eventually be counted.
Berks did submit two vote counts, with the one that did not include the undated votes being certified and the one with undated votes not certified. The state is requesting counties submit a certified count that includes the undated votes so the process will be able to move quickly and smoothly if a decision to add them to the total vote count is made.
Cody Kauffman, the county’s first assistant solicitor, recommended the board send the state the certified results including the undated mail ballots to be consistent with the court order.
Barnhardt made a motion to adhere to the directive from the state.
But Leinbach and Rivera said they couldn’t support certifying undated ballots under the current law, and the motion failed for a lack of a second.
“How do I certify something that the law says can’t count?” Leinbach asked. “And that the courts have not yet moved to finality. What they have ruled is what we have already done.”
Riegner pointed out that the board provided the certified results without the undated ballots but did not merge those results with the tally of undated ballots, noting that what the county would be submitting is different from what it has already done.
Leinbach said that since the court order does not specifically mention certification of the results including the undated mail ballots he feels like the county has no authority to do what the Department of State is asking counties to do.
Rivera agreed with Leinbach, saying he would prefer to wait to certify that count until a final decision is made by the courts.