The Lancaster County Elections Office expects mail-in ballots to begin reaching the mailboxes of the voters who requested them in the first week of October, Chief Clerk Christa Miller confirmed at Wednesday’s Board of Elections meeting.
“We are on track,” she said.
Her team had been drafting and proofreading the ballots while awaiting court rulings on whether certain third-party candidates would be listed or not. On Monday, the state Supreme Court issued the final ruling, affirming a lower court decision that Cornell West had not met the necessary requirements.
That allowed the Elections Office to finalize the ballots and send “test decks” to the printer. One is back already and the other is coming Thursday, Miller said.
Next week, the office will conduct logic & accuracy tests on the roughly 500 scanners that will be used in the election. Republican and Democratic party representatives are invited to witness the testing. Registered citizens’ organizations are allowed to be present, too, and one is eligible locally: PA Fair Elections, an organization led statewide by Heather Honey. Spotlight PA says Honey frequently spreads election misinformation, and the group, which meets online, has heard from at least two members of the team that tried to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election.
The Elections Board’s members are the three county commissioners. The board’s meeting Wednesday was held to hear Miller’s updates and to begin the process of moving polling places — a routine part of every election, as there are always a few regular locations that are unavailable for one reason or another.
For November, there will be just four:
Lancaster City – Fourth Ward, First Precinct
From: Teen Haven
205 S Queen St., Lancaster, PA 17603
To: The Lord’s House of Prayer
133 E Vine St., Lancaster, PA 17602
Lancaster City – Sixth Ward, Fourth Precinct
From: Ebenezer Baptist Church
701 N Lime St., Lancaster, PA 17602
To: Otterbein United Methodist Church
20 E Clay St., Lancaster, PA 17602
Lancaster Township – Third District
To: Lancaster Township Fire Dept.
125 Fairview Ave., Lancaster, PA 17603
To: Cristo Luz de Salvacion
125 Fairview Ave., Lancaster, PA 17603
Providence Township – East District
From: Smithville Church of God
595 Pennsy Road, New Providence, PA 17560
To: Providence Church, 269 Cinder Road
New Providence, PA 17560
The board on Wednesday approved the first step, the public posting of notifications announcing the changes. Next Wednesday, there will be a public hearing, after which the board will vote on finalizing the relocations and making them official.
Currently, there are 356,781 registered voters in Lancaster County, Miller said, and the Elections Office has received 43,204 applications for mail-in ballots. Both numbers are steadily rising as the Nov. 5 election approaches, she said.
The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 21. The last day to request a mail-in ballot is Oct. 29, one week before Election Day.
Miller said her office expects roughly 60,000 to 70,000 mail-in ballot requests — midway between the number requested in the 2022 midterms (about 50,000) and the 2020 general election during the pandemic (about 110,000).
Election information
To learn more about voting in Lancaster County, visit the Board of Elections website. It has links to polling locations and other information, as well as videos on how to vote and a link to Votes PA, the state elections website.
In line with Friday’s Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, mail-in ballots that lack a proper date on their envelopes will be invalid. When that happens, counties will attempt to notify voters by email, and they will be entitled to cast provisional ballots.
LNP reporter Tom Lisi asked the board for their thoughts on the decision. It doesn’t matter, Commissioner Josh Parsons said: The board’s only job is to apply the law as written and adjudicated. He accused Lisi of pursing a partisan agenda and asking the question because he, Lisi, disapproves of the date requirement.
That’s reading more into the inquiry than is there, Lisi said: “You’ve given opinions about court cases before. I just wanted to ask your opinion.”
In response to other questions, the commissioners assured the meeting audience that the county has extremely robust and well vetted election security and ballot storage security, and that there are documentation requirements in place to keep noncitizens from voting.
Ricardo Almodovar, an organizer with ACLU Pennsylvania, urged the board to install ballot drop boxes and to notify mail-in voters if there’s an error that invalidates their ballots. That notification process already is in effect and being followed, Commissioner Ray D’Agostino said. As for drop boxes, the board voted against them in 2022 and that remains the policy, he said.
