County bolsters election staff to handle mail-ins
The introduction of widespread voting by mail in the Keystone State turned counting votes from a sprint into a marathon. Berks County was no exception. It took local election officials two days following the June primary to count the surge of ballots sent by mail over concerns about the potential for coronavirus transmission at polling places. That meant the candidates running in competitive contests were forced to wait to see who voters selected.
County officials want to make sure that doesn’t happen in the upcoming 2020 presidential election. They took several actions at
meetings of the county commissioners and the elections board Thursday with that goal in mind.
The commissioners approved temporarily hiring eight people through the end of the year in the election services office to help handle the demand that voting by mail has created ahead of the 2020 presidential
election.
Commissioner Kevin S. Barnhardt said the office has so far received 48,000 applications for a mailed ballot. That number is already significantly higher than the 38,000 total applications the office received before the June primary.
Following the commissioners meeting, the election board took additional actions.
The board agreed to rent a conference room at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel as the location for
opening the ballots that arrive by mail. Barnhardt said the plan is to have 100 county employees working around the clock on Election Day in the conference room removing ballots from the envelopes.
Those ballots then will be transported in a locked box truck to the commissioners boardroom on the 13th floor of the Berks County Services Center, accompanied by a deputy sheriff to ensure the process is secure. There they will be run through digital scanners that tally
the votes.
Any ballots that have not been opened by the time the workers leave the hotel will be taken to the commissioners boardroom for overnight storage.
“The goal is to get these all counted on Election Day, but it may go into the wee hours of the morning,” Barnhardt said. “Allegheny County claims they got all its primary ballots counted by the end of the day with the help of 100 people so that’s kind of what we’re basing that on.”