Nearly 29K Allegheny County voters receive wrong mail-in ballots

Nearly 29,000 Allegheny County voters have received the wrong ballot because of a programming and printing error by the company hired to print and mail the county’s ballots, officials said Wednesday.

Elections officials began hearing of the misprinted ballots on Friday, said Elections Division Manager David Voye. About 20 county residents said their mail-in or absentee ballot packets had the wrong information.

Midwest Direct, the Cleveland-based company hired to print, collate and mail the ballots, told elections officials that a programming error caused the ballot file to be matched with the wrong individual’s information. A total of 28,879 voters were affected.

The result is that those voters received ballots meant for someone living in another voting district. While the choices for national and statewide races will be the same, the candidates for U.S. Congress and the state legislature could be wrong.

Voters who received the wrong ballot will be sent a new one, Voye said. Those ballots will be delivered to the post office Thursday, and most should be delivered by next week. The re-issued ballots will be identified on the envelope.

Incorrect ballots that have been returned will be put aside and neither opened nor counted, he said.

“Voters in this county should be confident that their votes are accurately counted and protected,” Voye said. “Our very system of government depends on free and fair elections and nothing underscores that more than a presidential election.”

In a letter to the elections division, Midwest Direct President Sean M. Gebbie blamed the issues on an error in the “ballot image mapping.” He explained that the company matches each ballot file with an individual’s data based on county voter rolls.

“In this case, an error was made and it mapped each ballot image up one recipient,” Gebbie wrote, noting that the county’s data was correct. “As an example, voter No. 1 received voter No. 2’s ballot.”

Midwest Direct also is printing and mailing ballots to Westmoreland County voters.

Technical issues at the company’s printing facilities in Cleveland delayed the mailing of the first batch of 50,000 ballots to Westmoreland voters, county officials said.

Westmoreland is paying the company up to $170,000. County commissioners said that Midwest Direct’s performance and any potential legal action will be addressed after the Nov. 3 election.

“We want to first make sure the ballots are sent and counted and our voting machines are prepped for the election,” said Commissioner Sean Kertes.

Allegheny County elections officials have approved 371,062 applications for ballots, officials said. Of those, between 35,000 and 40,000 still have to be mailed.

Midwest was in the midst of processing another 19,564 ballots, though they had not been printed, Voye said. That batch will be printed, with ballot packets delivered to the post office Wednesday and Thursday, he said.

Once the incorrect ballots and 19,564 in-progress ballots are mailed, Midwest will process the remaining Allegheny County ballots.

The Elections Division will soon have a search feature online allowing voters to check if they have an affected ballot using their name or voter identification number. They can also use the state’s online ballot tracker and see when their ballot was mailed. If the date in the “Ballot Mailed On” column is Sept. 28, 2020, that voter might have received the wrong ballot.

The top right corner of a mail-in ballot declares the municipality or city, voting ward and district. Voters should check that information to make sure it is correct for them.

Voye pledged to keep the elections process transparent, including work done by third parties.

“This was a failure on behalf of our contractor that impacts too many of our voters,” he said. “I apologize for it and commit to you that I will do everything in my power to ensure that we are not plagued by any other such issues.”

Staff writer Rich Cholodofsky contributed.