Officials support proposed election changes
Lehigh Valley election officials are offering full-throated support behind a recommendation that counties be allowed to start counting mail-in ballots up to three weeks before the general election, one of several changes the Pennsylvania Department of State is floating to lawmakers.
The recommendations, penned by the Pennsylvania Department of State but needing action from state legislators, would go a long way to tackle problems that came to light in the June 2 primary. If lawmakers don’t tackle the problems, election officials warn it could take days to determine which presidential candidate carried Pennsylvania, a critical swing state.
“We’d spread the whole process out. That would be fantastic. That would be great,” said Leigh County Chief Clerk of Elections Timothy Benyo, sounding relieved just thinking about the proposal.
The June 2 primary was the first time mail-in ballots were used in Pennsylvania, and the coronavirus crisis created a larger-than-expected wave of ballots. Lehigh County officials started counting the ballots at 7 a.m. Election Day but didn’t determine the winner of its final race until the close of business the following Friday. They didn’t report their initial count until June 12, according to the Department of State.
But Lehigh was far from alone. In an analysis of the primary, the Department of State found about half of the state’s 67 counties were still canvassing more than a week after the election ended. The count dragged on for more than two weeks in Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties, among others.
“Allowing counties to begin taking these steps earlier would allow them to report accurate and nearly complete results in a timely manner,” according to the department’s analysis.
Northampton County managed to report its unofficial results by Election Night, but Registrar Amy Cozze doesn’t think that would be repeatable with the higher turnout expected of a presidential election without a head start.
“If they don’t allow us to canvass these results sooner, everybody is going to have to wait days for Pennsylvania to report its results,” she said.
Part of the logic about holding off the tally until Election Day was to prevent word from leaking about results before polls even opened. Cozze noted that election staff sorting through the ballots and scanning them don’t have access to the results. Only a limited number of full-time staff can pull the results from the computer, she said, and those aren’t reviewed until polls close.
“We wouldn’t have the capacity to leak the results because we wouldn’t know what they were,” Cozze said.
She and Benyo supported or were indifferent to three other recommendations made in the report, including: ■ Permitting counties to count ballots that arrive as late as the Friday after the election so long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Currently, ballots must arrive by 8 p.m. Election Day in order to be counted. ■ Requiring counties to start mailing out ballots 28 days before the election. Counties are currently required to begin mailing ballots out 14 days before an election. ■ Granting counties new powers making it easier to hire poll workers. The state relaxed standards for the June primary so poll workers did not need to be residents of their polling districts. The Department of State advised making those changes permanent.
Both fully supported making the poll worker changes permanent, saying it would make it easier for counties to find capable poll workers. Cozze said it’s common to have poll workers call off the day of the election, leaving counties scrambling. In small boroughs like Chapman, this can be extremely difficult thanks to the short notice and limited pool of eligible workers.
Benyo agreed, saying the law made sense decades ago when everyone knew their neighbors. If an ineligible voter showed up to vote, a local poll worker would spot them on sight and investigate. Today the law is a hindrance that handicaps election staff, he added.
“Now people don’t really know the people living beside them anymore. The way the world works today, I don’t know if it’s living up to its expectations from 1937,” he noted.
Neither felt strongly about accepting ballots that arrived late but were postmarked by Election Day. Benyo indicated the change would match measures taken for members of the military serving abroad, so it would not dramatically alter the time frame of the count. Lehigh received 231 late mail-in ballots that were not counted in the June primary, he said.
Cozze saw no problem with requiring counties to mail out ballots 28 days before the election, saying it would give voters more time to get their ballots in early. But Benyo hesitated, saying court challenges have made the current 14-day window trying. In 2016, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Joe Vadvarka,
a little-known perennial candidate running as a Democrat for a U.S. Senate seat, belonged on the primary ballot just a week before the election. Requiring counties to make a decision about ballots that far ahead of the election could lead to mistakes, he stated.
“I’m not sure how we would do that if we don’t have a product to send out because it’s not finalized who’s on the ballot,” he concluded.