Vote By Mail

Pennsylvania’s top election official said Wednesday that voters who have not returned their mail-in ballots yet should now drop them off in person.

The Allegheny County Elections Division has managed to completely process all of the mail-in ballot applications it has received so far, with two weeks to go until the November election, and is working around the clock to finalize other important details -- all while being swamped with questions from voters.

The Allegheny County Elections Division announced Wednesday that the company in charge of printing and mailing ballots sent the wrong ballots to 28,879 voters, citing an error by the vendor in charge of printing and mailing the ballots. 

A postcard from a statewide nonprofit group has confused some Pennsylvanians ahead of the general election. More than a dozen voters reported receiving a malier from The Voter Project to ProPublica’s ElectionLand tipline. 

Voter registration in Pennsylvania has likely set records, election officials said Wednesday, and requests for mail-in ballots ahead of the general election have already exceeded total mail-in voting in the primary. The state also announced plans to counteract efforts to claim victory on Election Night before the mail-in ballots are counted.

To accommodate an enormous influx of mail ballots in a highly contested presidential election year, the Allegheny County Board of Elections voted unanimously Thursday to expand voting options, and officials updated the public on other plans to expand the county's ability to count ballots in November.

Allegheny County started sending applications for mail-in ballots to every registered voter in the county this week. Officials recommend applying for the ballot as soon as you get your application, and filling out and returning mail ballots well before Election Day. 

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced Tuesday that he would suspend operational changes to the U.S. Postal Service that many feared would impact the general election. But a Pittsburgh representative for postal workers said employees worry that the politicized debate over voting by mail and funding for the postal service may have already impacted the public’s view of the institution.

The Pennsylvania Department of State asked the state Supreme Court on Thursday to extend the deadline to receive mail ballots in the November election by three days – from 8 p.m. on Election Day to the Friday following the election. If granted, the request would likely expand the number of eligible ballots cast in a state Donald Trump won in 2016 by very slim margins.

Pennsylvania lawmakers acknowledge they need to change the state’s election code before November to accommodate the expected large number of mail-in ballots.

With less than three months before the election, Pennsylvania elections officials were hit with another voting lawsuit Friday. This one alleges that thousands of votes could be discarded if mail-in ballot procedures aren’t changed.

A federal judge has agreed to fast track the lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s election campaign against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the commonwealth’s 67 county election boards over vote-by-mail procedures.

U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan limited the scope of discovery, however, to the information counties and the Department of State already have assembled for a report on the June 2 primary that’s due to be submitted by August 1 to the state legislature.

The Allegheny County Board of Elections met Monday morning to review how the county handled the June primary -- an election that took place amid the unprecedented circumstances of a pandemic, a new mail-in voting law and voter turnout that was twice as high as expected. But while Democrats and Republican board members said the overall process was smooth, both sides saw areas for significant improvement.

Less than two weeks before the primary, Pennsylvania House Republicans are asking the state to reverse its approval of Allegheny County’s limited in-person voting plan, saying it will create long lines at polls and disenfranchise voters.

In its last public meeting before the June 2 primary, the Allegheny County Board of Elections met Tuesday to run through final details and plans for the upcoming election, which could lead to higher-than-normal turnout despite the threat of a global pandemic.

The Allegheny County Elections Division has been sending vote-by-mail applications to every registered voter in the county ahead of the June 2 primary, but those applications may not reach every voting bloc.

Elections wouldn’t happen without poll workers, and as Allegheny County prepares to carry out the June 2 primary amid the coronavirus pandemic, officials have been reckoning with whether they’ll have enough people to staff every polling place.