Credit: County of Bucks
Bucks County’s efforts to get absentee and mail-in ballots printed and out to residents who requested them is underway.
As of Monday, the Bucks County Board of Elections was awaiting printed ballots to be returned so they can be sent out starting next week.
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As of last week, the county had received 127,000 requests for mail-in ballots, with tens of thousands more anticipated.
In addition to Board of Elections staff working hard to fulfill requests, staff loaned from other departments have been assisting. The county is adding five new full-time permanent Board of Elections staffers and 10 temporary ones.
The county has added additional on-demand ballot printing and sorting equipment, including one large mail sorter called “The Dragon,” to keep up with the influx of election mail expected amid the pandemic.
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Last Monday was the first day the county could have mailed ballots to voters who requested them. However, they opted not to due to a pending legal challenge. The challenge ended up being settled midweek with a ruling that Green Party candidates have to be stricken from ballots due to paperwork errors.
Over the weekend, the county sent instructions for absentee and mail-in ballots to the printer, county spokesperson Larry King said.
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“The printer is working to get the ballots, along with the envelopes, printed in time to start sending them out next week,” he told LevittownNow.com.
The ballots will be printed to include the latest mail-in voting instructions and information on the deadline extension recently granted in a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision. Among the changes granted by the ruling is a three-day extension for counties to receive ballots that are postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
At last week’s Bucks County Commissioners meeting, officials said there could be more than 200,000 votes cast by mail in the coming election. Making the process more stressful for the county is the fact it is the first year the state has allowed widespread mail-in voting.
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The county has taken several steps to help residents drop off ballots if they don’t want to mail them.
Traditional in-person voting still remains an option across the county.
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Commissioner Bob Harvie, chairman of the Board of Elections, said earlier this month that the county is receiving numerous contacts from the public about how to vote by mail. The county has set up a webpage to assist residents.
He has also noted that some people worried about not getting a mail-in ballot are sending in multiple applications and slowing down the process because humans and not machines verify requests. Harvie noted that there are safeguards in place to make sure people are only able to vote once.
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The state allows voters to track ballot request applications online and also once ballots are sent in.
There has been concern in Bucks County and widely in Pennsylvania that the battleground state’s election results may not be known for several days after Election Day. Mail-in voting delays, new voting machines used across the state, and high turnout have sparked the fears.
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Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo, a former Republican state representative, have mentioned multiple times that it could be a problem and implored the state legislature to make reforms to the 2019 election law that allowed for widespread mail-in voting.
The largest change DiGirolamo and the other commissioners want is an early date to start tallying mail-in ballots. Presently, the ballots can only be counted starting on the day of the election.
“Even with the new machines we have, we are really going to be strained to come up with a reasonable vote count on election night,” he said.
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Debate over possible changes have continued in Harrisburg, but no firm agreement has been reached as of Tuesday.
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