County leaders in Pa. call for mail-in ballot reform

County commissioners throughout Pennsylvania are calling for a series of election reforms they contend will improve the balloting process across the state and clarify procedures that resulted in counting delays and litigation.

According to a preliminary report released Thursday by the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, officials recommend state lawmakers and Gov. Tom Wolf amend the state’s election law to allow local officials to begin the laborious process to count mail-in ballots before Election Day. County leaders also want an earlier deadline to accept mail-in ballot applications.

“These two priorities alone could resolve a significant portion of the challenges counties experienced in 2020,” said Indiana County Commissioner Sherene Hess, who also serves as chairwoman of the commissioners’ association reform committee.

More than 2 million mail-in ballots were cast in Pennsylvania during the November election amid the coronavirus pandemic. Counties were not permitted to begin counting those ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. That process included validating ballots, opening outer and secrecy envelopes and eventually counting the votes. It’s a process that took days to complete.

County leaders also want to set a new deadline for mail-in ballot applications. The law allows voters to request ballots up to seven days before the election. Commissioners said that deadline should be moved to 15 days ahead of the election to allow more time for ballots to arrive in voters’ hands and to be returned by mail to the counties before Election Day.

Both recommendations have the support of local leaders.

“We need to be able to process ballots before Election Day so we can have the results that night after the polls close,” Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said.

Nearly 350,000 mail-in ballots were cast in Allegheny County for the November election.

In Westmoreland County, more than 60,000 mail-in ballots were cast.

“There needs to be extreme clarity with how ballots are to be counted. The law should spell out exactly what should be on the ballot and what a voter should do,” Westmoreland County Commissioner Doug Chew said.

He pointed specifically to circumstances that led to prolonged litigation over the results of the race for the state Senate seat in the 45th District, where elections officials in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties treated mail-in ballots with technical flaws differently. Incumbent Democrat Jim Brewster retained his seat with a 69-vote victory in large part because Allegheny County counted mail-in ballots from voters who neglected to write the date on the outer mailing envelope. Ballots with the same flaws were not counted in Westmoreland County.

Pennsylvania’s Act 77 election reforms, passed in October 2019 with support from both Democrats and Republicans, expanded voting to allow for “no excuse” mail-in balloting. (Previously, mail-in voting was limited to absentee voters, who declare a valid excuse for being unable to vote in person.) Voters increasingly favored the mail-in balloting option as the pandemic surged this fall and led to issues that elections officials had not previously anticipated.

County leaders lobbied throughout the summer to address those issues, including a request to start the counting process earlier. Negotiations between the Republican-controlled General Assembly and the Democratic governor failed to result in any changes to the state’s election law.

The seven-page report detailed multiple recommendations for changes to the election law, including moving up the applications deadline, a move commissioners said will reduce confusion among voters and offer additional time for ballots to be sent out and returned through the mail.

“The counties and the state really need to work together so, whenever the state passes a rule, the counties are on board,” Chew said.

County leaders recommended the law be amended to provide specific instructions of how to operate drop boxes and how or if flawed ballots can be corrected by voters before the election.

Fitzgerald said he is not in favor of legislating what he called “minutiae” and suggested strict requirements would work to disenfranchise voters more than it would streamline the process.

“You want to make it fair and easy, and I feel very confident we did,” Fitzgerald said.