Ballot drop boxes coming to Lehigh
Lehigh County’s Board Of Elections Approved A Plan Thursday To Use Drop Boxes For Absentee and Mail-In Ballots A Week After The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Cleared Their Usage In The Upcoming Election.
The plan passed by a 2-0 margin with Democrats Phillips Armstrong and Doris Glaess-mann backing the proposal. Jane Ervin, the Republican on the three-person board, was absent from the emergency meeting, which was scheduled just days beforehand.
“This does bring about much greater accessibility to the voters of Lehigh County,” Armstrong said during the meeting.
Rather than return the absentee or mail-in ballots to Lehigh County through the mail, voters will be able to turn them in at
designated drop boxes. Each Lehigh County commissioner district will have one drop box in a local municipal building, Armstrong said. The boxes will be emptied at least once every 24 hours and under constant surveillance to ensure no one tampers with them, Armstrong said.
Drop boxes have become another front in the battle between Republicans and Democrats leading up to the hotly contested presidential race. Without evidence, President Donald Trump has attacked the expansion of mail-in ballots as inviting fraud into the campaign. Meanwhile, Democrats have widely embraced the ballots as a way to allow more people to safely vote, particularly in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the midst of the fighting, the U.S. Postal Service has warned that cuts to its service could delay the arrival of absentee and mail-in ballots. As a result, voters could miss critical deadlines in the elections process, causing their ballot to go uncounted.
Armstrong hailed the drop boxes as a way to make it easier for voters to hand in their ballots without depending on the post office.
He said the drop boxes should be in place by late October. The county has already bought the boxes.
The drop boxes will be at: North Whitehall Township municipal building, 3256 Levans Road
Upper Macungie Township municipal building, 8330 Schantz Road
Catasauqua municipal building, 90 Bridge St.
Lehigh County Government Center, 17 S. Seventh St., Allentown
Emmaus municipal building, 28 S. Fourth St.
The drop box at the Lehigh County Government Center will be the only one available 24 hours a day, Armstrong said. The others will be available during the normal business hours of their host municipality.
The ballots being dropped off must still meet all normal requirements. Ballots must be in the provided, unmarked secrecy envelope, which must be in the provided outer mailing envelope. The outer envelope must be signed and dated on the back. Ballots that don’t meet these guidelines may be rejected and go uncounted.
With the drop boxes now approved, the board voted to cancel extended hours for the elections office during the work week next month.
The county intended to keep the elections office open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays starting Oct. 19. Instead, it will now be open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. those days.
The office will still be open 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. the last two Saturdays before the election, Oct. 24 and 31.