Election Day calm was a welcome show of democracy

Drop box worries, ballot harvesting concerns, voter intimidation fears, lengthy delays and long-awaited results: The fretting over Election Day procedures was on full display in the weeks before the midterm election on Tuesday.

Added to those unfounded worries were the real issues of an 11th-hour state Supreme Court ruling setting aside the acceptance of undated mail-in ballots. The court ruled that ballots without an accurate date on the outside were to be segregated and evaluated later. Voter service offices had to deal with whether inaccurate also meant incomplete or careless handwriting, and whether segregating was tantamount to rejecting.

The barrage of negative — make that downright nasty — advertising by candidates in a polarized political atmosphere didn’t help breed confidence, either. Nor did the missteps local counties have committed in elections as recent as the spring primary with ballots printed incorrectly and training/technology snafus that resulted in long lines and delays.

But with all that recent history and baggage, the 2022 mid-terms went off quite well. There were few problems, and the tabulation of results was fast, accurate and well managed.

The voters, too, though weary from the candidates’ onslaught of pitches and insults did their part. Turnout was nearly 68% in Montgomery County, and things went smoothly throughout the day at the polls, county officials said.

One snafu was reported by a voter to The Reporter early Tuesday. A voter said the drop box at the Lansdale District Court office was not open at 8 a.m. County voter services officials said that both employees assigned to open the box were caught in a traffic jam due to a car accident. The box was open within an hour.

There were no concerns reported to the Montgomery County tip line, and the rest of the day went smoothly, said Board of Elections Chairman Ken Lawrence Jr.

In Berks County, awaiting the results of the day’s big races was hardly the only anticipated drama.

Voters and county officials had fresh memories of serious issues with the May primary in Berks, when problems with new electronic poll books led to confusion at the polls and left the county scrambling to make sure voters were able to cast their ballots.

With Tuesday’s election certain to draw much bigger turnout, a repeat of such problems would have been disastrous.

To their credit, county leaders acknowledged the mistakes, studied what went wrong and developed solutions that underwent stringent tests prior to the election.

The result was a fairly uneventful Election Day in Berks. There were a handful of minor issues that were dealt with quickly, but no widespread problems. Nothing could have been more welcome.

We congratulate the county government for getting it right, with special thanks to the staff members who worked around the clock for weeks in advance of the election, during Election Day and then counting the votes that night and early into Wednesday morning.

The voters of Berks deserve credit for a spirited response to this big election. A total of 154,844 ballots were cast for a turnout of about 58% of registered voters. That was about a percentage point higher than in the 2018 midterms and well above the 42% recorded in 2014.

As for now, the final counts of provisional and military ballots are being completed, and then we can put this election behind us and move ahead.

Voter apathy is definitely not an issue these days, at least in even-numbered years when the highest profile elections take place. But as we have often observed, the interest doesn’t always filter down to local elections, where a single vote carries even more weight than in the state and national races.

Next year will be those allimportant local “off-year” elections. We encourage those who turned out Tuesday to show up and do this again. Exercising democracy is a good habit: Let’s keep it going.