Marian Schneider: Westmoreland should be making it easier to vote, not more difficult

In early March, two of the three Westmoreland County commissioners announced that they would not consider installing a ballot drop box anywhere in the county in 2024, despite doing so in each election year since 2020.

The commissioners claim that drop boxes in recent elections weren’t getting enough use. But this is specious reasoning. After all, anyone can tell you that voter turnout drops during non-presidential election years. But that fact didn’t stop the county commissioners from explaining away the need for drop boxes by citing low voter turnout in 2022 and 2023. That’s like saying we don’t need lightbulbs at night because it’s sunny during the day.

This isn’t the first time Westmoreland County has enacted policies that make voting more difficult. In 2020, county commissioners refused to allow voters to “cure” mail ballots that were missing or included an incorrect date on the ballot’s outer envelope. Neighboring Allegheny County did allow ballot curing. That meant that in a tightly contested election for a state Senate seat that crossed county lines, the county commissioners essentially invalidated some of their own constituents’ votes.

By land area, Westmoreland County is one of the largest of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. Much of the county is rural and remote. Offering voters every option to drop off their ballot is a crucial tool to ensure that even the most remote residents have accessible options when making their plan to vote.

It’s not an understatement to say that 2024 could be the most consequential election year in our lifetimes. It could also be a record-setting year for voter turnout. At the same time, the nation has not been so politically divided since the Civil War, and threats to our democracy are rife. In this charged environment, casting a ballot has taken on a sense of urgency and importance that many voters have never felt before.

With so much at stake in November, election officials should be doing everything in their power to make voting as accessible as possible.

The good news is that some county election officials are doing just that.

For example, the Allegheny County Board of Elections adopted a policy to establish five new drop-off locations for voters to bring their mail ballots across the county for the primary election in April. That’s a significant improvement from the single downtown drop box that has been the sole option for dropping off ballots since 2020.

In Harrisburg, election officials are reportedly planning to implement drop boxes across Dauphin County as well. In Berks County, election officials unanimously voted to add a third drop box ahead of the spring primary and plan to add a fourth ahead of the fall general election.

In this pivotal election year, it is Pennsylvania election officials’ responsibility to make sure every voter has a chance to cast their ballot, not make voting more difficult.

Westmoreland County Commissioners Sean Kertes and Doug Chew should reconsider their position, listen to the voters who have already spoken out in favor of drop boxes, and commit to installing drop boxes for the 2024 general election in November. This election has every chance of record-setting voter turnout. Narrowing access to the vote in such a critical election year isn’t just foolhardy, it’s also damaging to our democracy. Westmoreland County voters deserve better.

Marian Schneider is the senior policy counsel for voting rights at the ACLU of Pennsylvania. From 2015 to 2017, she served as deputy secretary for elections and administration at the Pennsylvania Department of State.