Meet IM-306
Are high-speed envelope openers a key to timely Lehigh Valley election results?
One of the secret weapons in getting timely Election Day results in Lehigh County this year weighs in at about 245 pounds and costs as much as some cars. Its name: IM-306.
The machine is capable of opening up to 40,000 envelopes an hour, using a milling cutter, not a blade, to feather the envelope’s edge and protect valuable contents inside — such as your mail-in ballot.
While high-speed envelope openers have been around for decades, demand for the machines surged this year amid a pandemic that forced counties across the country to consider how to efficiently open tens of thousands of ballots. In Pennsylvania, officials can’t begin opening ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day, an impossible task to get done in one day without the help of automation.
In fact, Lehigh County bought two of the machines, at about $20,000 a pop, from Lower Macungie Township’s Document Systems Ltd., a dealer for mailing-services giant Quadient. Tim Benyo, Lehigh County’s chief clerk of elections, said the county ordered the machines right after the June primary, an election during which Lehigh County burned the motors out on three smaller, table-top envelope openers.
“This is a night-and-day comparison,” Benyo said of the IM-306. “I’ve been playing with them this week. They’re awesome.”
Northampton County also has turned to automation to speed up the process on Election Day, though it didn’t opt for the big IM-306 models.
Northampton spent $12,559 this year on three mail openers. That included ordering an IM-16C, which can open up to 300 envelopes a minute, in February, and then, in May and July, two IM-210 models, which can open up to 400 envelopes a minute.
The back-to-the-future role of high-speed envelope openers is among the interesting storylines to emerge for an Election Day like no other.
Here’s what you should know about Lehigh Valley Election Day logistics.
A ballot’s path
First, state and local officials urge voters to immediately hand-deliver their filled-out ballots to their county election offices or designated drop boxes.
Lehigh County’s drop boxes are picked up once or twice a day, depending on each site’s activity level, Benyo said. Then they get dropped off at the Lehigh County Government Center in Allentown, where they are then marked to make sure they’re from a valid drop box. From there, they are put in trays and the barcodes are scanned, Benyo said, before they are put in alphabetical order by district and kept in a locked room.
The process is similar in Northampton County.
Every 24 hours, the county’s drop boxes are emptied by sheriff ’s deputies, who have been deputized as elections officials. The officials fill out a “chain of custody affidavit” and return the ballots to the county’s Election Division in Easton, where the ballots are scanned into the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors system and then secured in a locked vault, said Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure.
As of Oct. 20, Northampton County had approved 79,161 mail-in ballot applications, mailed out 78,424 of them and already received 47,323 of the ballots.
The county did not have updated figures to share Tuesday, but McClure said the number of received ballots has “gone up probably dramatically over the weekend.”
In Lehigh County, Benyo said Monday the county had sent out 86,821 of the 87,472 ballot requests it processed. So far, he said 39,038 of the ballots have been received, scanned in and filed, a number that will continue to grow as scanning continues.
“We look at every ballot to make sure when we scan it in that the name on the ballot is the same name that comes up on the screen,” Benyo said. “It does take a while to go through 87,000 ballots. People are getting a little frustrated because they’re not notified that their ballot is logged in. But if it got in here to the office, it’s definitely still here. No one is taking anything, tampering with anything.
“They’re locked in a room every night, and we’re here almost 24/7 anyway, so it’s not like anybody is sneaking in.”
After being scanned in and filed, your mail-in ballot envelope is ready to go to the letter opener machine’s hopper — but that can’t happen until 7 a.m. on Election Day.
Envelope opener demand
Thomas Stofanak has been in the mailing industry for three decades and has sold, maybe, 10 of the IM-306 models during that time.
“It’s very rare because not many companies have that much incoming mail at one time,” said Stofanak, noting insurance companies are the most common suitors.
But 2020 isn’t a normal year. This year, the business Stofanak owns, Document Systems Ltd., has sold nine envelope openers, including four of the big IM-306 models across his business’ selling territory of Lehigh, Northampton, Berks and Lebanon counties, as well as part of Warren County, New Jersey.
“When the county of Lehigh called, I said, ‘You want one of them?’” Paul Tipa, a supervisor at Document Systems, recalls asking.
“No, we want two of them,” the county replied.
“That kind of took me off-guard,” Tipa said.
With the demand, coming from the increase in voting by mail once the pandemic hit, it took about eight to 12 weeks for counties to get their machines, which will be a crucial part of the election, considering the envelope-within-an-envelope ballot packaging.
“If you have 50,000 envelopes that come in, that’s really 100,000 that you need to open,” said Stofanak, president of Document Systems. “It’s an important part. You can have the best equipment in the world to read it, but how are you going to open it?”
Document Systems is an authorized dealer of Quadient, an international company that offers a range of software and technology, including mail-related systems.
Jeff Crouse, Quadient’s chief solution officer of mail-related equipment, said the company has seen demand across the country spike since April and the primary election season. In addition to envelope openers, demand increased for folder inserters to help assemble ballot packages, and security software to ensure “the right ballot goes in the right envelope and that only one is in there,” Crouse said.
Demand has continued right up to Election Day, he said, and Quadient expects to deliver and install its products through the end of the month.
“It’s going to be so important to have that automation in place,” he said. “We’re kind of waiting on the edge of our seats to make sure everything goes as smoothly as it can.”
What will polling places look like?
With the surge in mail-in and absentee ballots — Northampton and Lehigh counties usually would get only a few thousand each in a normal presidential election year — what will polling places look like on Election Day?
In Lehigh County, Benyo hopes it will be no worse than in the spring. He still expects there to be lines, just not as long as a normal presidential election.
“I’m hoping it’s less of a burden on the polling places and more of a burden on us here at the office, so that we can keep people safe and the poll workers aren’t overwhelmed, like in a normal presidential election where people are stuck in line for hours,” Benyo said.
Similarly, in Northampton County, McClure expects there to be lines, though the wait shouldn’t rival elections of the past.
The two counties said it is not mandatory for voters to wear masks, but it is being strongly encouraged to protect voters and poll workers. All poll workers are required to wear a mask or face shield, the counties said.
“People should be prepared to wait to vote and really they should bring a mask and wear it,” McClure said.
When will we get results?
With all the equipment and pre-Election Day effort, the big question remains: When will we know who wins?
Benyo thinks a “big chunk” of Lehigh County will be counted by 8 p.m., when the normal polling places wrap up voting.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a huge increase over the past with the normal results, midnight, maybe 1 o’clock,” he said. “I think that’s going to be the bulk of the number. I’m hoping to be done by, at latest, the afternoon of Wednesday, if everything goes well, and we’ll see how the equipment performs.
“I have great expectations.” McClure anticipates a similar timeline in Northampton County.
“We’ll definitely have most of the ballots that have been cast, either by mail or in person, by 6 or 7 a.m. the next morning,” he said. “But by 11 or midnight on Election Day, you’re going to have a pretty good idea of what happened in Northampton County.”