Pa.’s mail-in balloting had a big impact in 2020, but will it continue?

The legal basis in Pennsylvania has become a political football.

Casting a ballot by mail. It’s a concept that became common practice for elections in Pennsylvania.

The legislation, Act 77, was passed with widespread bipartisan support in 2019.

The law allowed for the expansion of mail voting, extended the voter registration deadline from 30 days before Election Day to 15 days, and it removed the straightticket option at the ballot booth.

Several months later, coronavirus cases would climb to pandemic status in 2020 and numerous traditional facets of life were altered, including the way elections were held.

“The arrival of mail-in voting in Pennsylvania predated the pandemic,” said Montgomery County Chief Operating Officer Lee Soltysiak. “So the implementation of mail-in voting in Pennsylvania was not at all related to the pandemic, but as it turned out, it was really an essential tool in helping us conduct an election during a pandemic.”

Montgomery County Board of Elections Chairman Ken Lawrence Jr. agreed, noting increasing popularity due to health and safety restrictions imposed during the early days of the global health crisis.

“Personally, for that first election, due to the fact we were under a stay-at-home order we absolutely promoted that vote-bymail because of the public health aspect there,” Lawrence said. “… People were not to leave home except for life-threatening situations.

“We were having a lot of problems getting poll workers for

that election because they didn’t want to leave,” he continued. “During that election we had to consolidate polling locations. So I think that absolutely contributed to the popularity of the vote-by-mail in 2020.”

More than 500,000 voters cast their ballots during the 2020 general election in Montgomery County. Of those figures, more than 265,000 people cast their vote in person. There were 279,956 mail-in ballots sent out, and 243,408 mail-in ballots returned.

Berks County saw nearly half of voters cast their ballots by mail in June 2020 primary. During the 2020 presidential election later that fall, 32% of voters cast a mail-in ballot.

In Chester County, 165,437 voters went to the polls and 151,149 others voted by mail in the 2020 general election, according to figures from the county’s voter services department.

‘Wasn’t ready for it’

However, those involved in the region’s political landscape observed problems with voting remotely.

“I think it exploded in popularity because of the pandemic and the system wasn’t ready for it. That’s why we’ve seen so many errors,” said Montgomery County Republican Committee Chairwoman Liz Havey, referring to several issues surrounding ballot printing and scanning.

Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale, the sole Republican on the board of commissioners who is also running for governor, has been a vocal critic of the election legislation.

“The act of sabotage known as Act 77, which gave Pennsylvania 50 days of noexcuse mail-in voting, is a scandal of epic proportions that both Democrats and Republicans are trying to sweep under the rug,” Gale said in an email. “Not only has no-excuse mail-in voting destroyed the integrity of Pennsylvania elections, it has come at great expense to the commonwealth’s 67 counties.”

Montgomery County Democratic Committee Chairman Joe Foster highlighted that Act 77 “takes away straight-party voting.”

“So when you have a ballot like you had in … November 2021, you had a dozen names or so, and more often than not, voters may or may not recognize these names so sometimes we see drop off voting,” Foster said. “So while it does increase the number of votes, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re voting for every position.”

Now it varies from precinct to precinct,” Foster continued. “But so, one of the concerns — and it’s the concerns of everybody really — is to make sure when someone gets a mail-in ballot, that they vote for all the spots, and that’s one of the issues both Republicans and Democrats face when you get a mail-in ballot.”

‘Two elections now’

The expansion of voting by mail created another way for voters to make their voices heard.

“It certainly has changed the way we handle elections because functionally there’s two elections now: there’s the vote-by-mail aspect of the election, and then the inperson election as well,” Lawrence said.

Similar top how people encountered a number of surges in the pandemic, election cycles continued to evolve.

“We had to create an operation that didn’t exist in the midst frankly of conducting the election, an election unlike one we’ve ever conducted and it all happened at the same time,” Soltysiak said.

Along with hiring additional staff, Montgomery County shelled out around $2 million to purchase equipment and still “needed to rent additional space” to conduct the mail-in component.

“We didn’t have the space before, we didn’t have the equipment before and we didn’t have the staff before; and along with it had to create all of the new processes to handle that aspect of the election,” Soltysiak said. “So quite a lot happened in the days of 2020, but now it is just a normal operating procedure.”

The expense is something Gale has objected to for some time.

“Montgomery County taxpayers have incurred millions of dollars of additional costs to lease a mail-in voting counting center, to purchase machines to extract the ballots from the envelopes, to print and pay postage costs to send the ballots out to voters, to install and monitor mail-in ballot drop boxes and hire additional staff to administer all this nonsense,” Gale said.

View from Berks

Berks County Commissioner Kevin Barnhardt, who leads the county’s election board, said he truly believes that voting by mail encourages people to vote who otherwise cannot make it to the polls on Election Day. And, the Democrat said, he’s a firm believer that it could lead to increased voter participation if the option remains in place.

But he also acknowledged that Act 77 has made running elections more difficult.

The introduction of widespread voting by mail transformed the process of counting votes from a breathless sprint into a grueling marathon.

It took Berks County election officials nearly two weeks to count the surge of ballots sent by mail in the 2020 presidential election. Dozens of staffers, some pulled from other county departments, worked nearly around the clock to get the ballots open and run through digital scanners that tallied the votes.

“Does it create additional work? Yes,” Barnhardt said. “Do we mind doing that? No, because it’s part of our job. We just have to band together to get the process completed as accurately and as quickly as possible.”

Barnhardt also pointed out that the commissioners have already made investments in equipment over the last two years to help improve efficiency. They purchased three high-speed ballot scanners and three envelope cutters to make the process faster.

“The cost of the technology is certainly expensive,” he said. “And we, as a county, are willing to make those investments.”

Taking a lot of time

During the next election cycle, voting by mail in Berks County decreased to about 22% in the November 2021 municipal election.

In Montgomery County, 151,121 ballots were cast in person and 72,861 ballots were mailed in the 2021 general election, according to statistics from the county’s unofficial election results website.

In Chester County, there were 103,145 ballots cast on Election Day and 40,756 cast through the mail, according to the county’s voter services department.

“I think it is important to feel confident in our elections,” said Chester County Commissioner Josh Maxwell during a results certification vote in November 2021.

The Democrat offered praise for the members of voter services and the county solicitor’s office who worked around the clock to get the vote count completed.

Fellow Chester County Commissioner Michelle Kichline was critical of the length of time to process results.

“This vote used to be a one-day process,” she said. “Now it is two weeks. I haven’t seen any evidence of fraud, but what I have seen is a process that isn’t working.”

In Montgomery County, Gale was the sole dissenting vote for result certification during the two election cycles.

Lawrence acknowledged the county’s office of voter services is “working through processes” with respect to mail-in voting. He also called on the state Legislature in Harrisburg to include language to allow for earlier precanvassing efforts. Barnhardt agreed. Berks County has joined other counties across the commonwealth in calling for state legislators to focus on two changes: giving counties additional time to process mailed ballots and moving the deadline for mailed ballots applications back to 15 days prior to an election.

“Those changes, particularly allowing us to pre-canvass the ballots, would take a lot of pressure off the 67 election departments across the state,” Barnhardt said.

The court battle

Act 77 has been the center of a legal battle to determine its constitutionality.

In January, the Commonwealth Court ruled that Act 77 is unconstitutional. But that decision was immediately appealed by Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration.

That means the fate of mail-in voting is on hold, with it remaining legal until the state Supreme Court weighs in.

“If the Pennsylvania Supreme Court does their job and upholds Pennsylvania’s Constitution, they will affirm the Commonwealth Court’s ruling which correctly found Act 77 to be unconstitutional,” Gale said. “However, in the past, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has put their political agenda ahead of the rule of law and I expect they will do so again by keeping Act 77 in place.

Partisan voting habits

Political leaders in Montgomery County have also observed partisan voting habits.

“Overwhelmingly, Democrats vote by mail. Overwhelmingly, Republicans prefer to vote in person,” Foster said.

“Well I think part of it is that Republicans believe that they really want their vote to count and they know when they go on Election Day, and they actually go to the polling place, and make their vote that it’s more likely to be counted than if it gets stuck in the mail,” Havey said.

“I’m not entirely sure why republicans aren’t as enthusiastic as voting by mail,” Foster said. “After all it is their bill.”

‘Respect both sides’

As for the voters themselves, Act 77 has given them a choice.

“I think it’s been a welcomed option for many voters in the county,” Soltysiak said. “It’s made voting more accessible, it’s made it more convenient and it really recognizes the fact that voting shouldn’t just be for people whose work or life schedules permit them to vote on Election Day.”

Lawrence disclosed he cast his ballot by mail in 2020 and in person in 2021.

“I think it’s important that we just respect both sides,” Lawrence said. “If you want to vote in person, that is certainly not going to go away, but to vote by mail that that is the law as well, and people have that option and that right.”

Campaigns start sooner

Voting by mail has also created another variable for candidates vying for positions in higher office as Foster has found. He noted “that vote-by-mail lengthens the campaign season” for wouldbe candidates.

“You have two targets now or two groups,” Foster said. “You have those who vote by mail, and those who vote in person, and now you’re focusing your campaign on both groups because it’s a different style. If you’re a candidate, or you’re a party, and you know that the ballots have been mailed out, and … let’s just say (the voters) get it sometime around mid-September or the third week of September and they will have them returned by mid-October.”

In those four weeks, you’re focusing on those individuals who have the ballot, and you know who they are, and so now you have to reach out to them as well as you can to assure that they remember to vote for you,” he continued. “And then you have to switch gears for those who vote in person. So it actually has lengthened the season and it’s made it slightly more expensive.”

Foster and Havey agreed that also means that the campaign season starts earlier for political contenders.

“Candidates now — you almost have to start campaigning at the latest by June,” Foster said. “That whole Labor Day thing is no longer. You have to start in June if not sooner.”

“It’s to gain name recognition because if you’re depending upon a vote-by-mail turnout, … with no straightparty voting, the issue is that when a voter gets their (ballot) and they’ve looked at all the names, they need to see and recognize your name.”

‘Boots-on-the-ground’

So that whole traditional fall run-up to Election Day — those campaigns, which were intense door knocking, mailing, texting, all that stuff, it makes it much more complicated and difficult for candidates to actually get their messages out before people make decisions,” Havey added.

In order to do so, both camps have seen a myriad of outreach methods such as messaging campaigns, flyers and in-person greetings.

Foster noted “the cease of door knocking as a campaign strategy during the pandemic.”

For Havey, that practice did not waiver.

“I mean Republicans were door knocking when Democrats weren’t during the pandemic,” she said. “We were safely standing outside, and knocking on doors, and following CDC guidelines but we definitely kept the bootson-the-ground approach more so than the Democrats who didn’t do the door knocking, and I think you’ll continue to see that.”

Foster has since noticed a change.

“But I’m seeing now more and more candidates are returning to door knocking, and I think by the summer, you’ll see more and more door knocking again because it is effective,” Foster said. “In fact, that might be the most effective way to sort of get out the vote and to garner support.”

“We’re seeing more of a hybrid,” Havey said, referring to campaigning procedures.

The postal delays

Havey noted additional headaches from “delays in the mail.”

She has also worked as a poll worker at a primarily Democrat-heavy polling place in Montgomery County for the past two decades, and has found both parties have experienced issues with voting by mail.

“This is not just a Republican issue, this is an issue for all voters,” she said.

For the upcoming 2022 election cycle, voters have until May 2 to register to vote.

Those interested in voting by mail have until May 10 to request a ballot and fill out an application. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on May 17 for anyone casting their ballot in person, according to the state’s election website.

It’s not yet clear how people will plan to vote in this current election cycle or election cycles to come.

“It’s hard to say,” Soltysiak said. “I think though the good thing about it is people will choose what’s best and most convenient for them.”

“I think there’s going to be more voting in person,” Havey said. “As long as COVID is not out of control, I think most people feel better.”

“This is a good one in Pennsylvania,” Foster said. “We have a governor and a U.S. Senate spot so people will be excited. I believe we’ll have a very high turnout come November, and I think vote by mail will be also high.”

“I wonder because last year we did see a 50-50 split in a lot of precincts and to some extent there are those who enjoy going to the polls,” Foster said. “So my guess is there’ll be a slight uptick in the number of people who are going to the polls, but I don’t think that vote-by-mail is going to stop.”

Lawrence maintained that voting by mail is “here to stay, and I think we’ll see a leveling off.” He anticipated that traditional measures would also remain popular.

“I think we certainly saw fewer people vote by mail in 2021, but of course that’s also not as a high turnout election in that local election year,” Lawrence said. “So I think the next presidential election in 2024 will really show where we’re going to level off on these things.”