Hunlock Township polling place runs out of paper ballots

In her first primary at the helm as Luzerne County’s election director, Eryn Harvey said she was pleased with the way Tuesday’s election was handled.

“There were no major issues. Nobody was disenfranchised,” Harvey said shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m.

More than 14,600 mail ballots were mostly processed by the time the polls closed, allowing those results to be swiftly uploaded, Harvey said.

Some polling places had to register voters on paper due to battery issues with the electronic poll books, Harvey said. The vendor had tested all electronic poll books before they were deployed. The county will have to revisit purchasing new electronic poll books because the current ones are getting too old, she said.

The most notable situation occurred in Hunlock Township, when the polling place ran out of paper ballots for a period, requiring voters to use the electronic ballot marking device that had been set up for disabled voters until a replenishment of paper arrived, officials confirmed.

An election bureau representative later delivered additional paper ballots for that polling place, Harvey said.

Harvey said there were false rumors of other polling places running out of paper ballots.

For the primary, the election bureau had decided voters would hand-mark their selections on paper ballots instead of the electronic ballot marking devices, although a device still had to be set up in each precinct for those with disabilities.

Harvey said the election bureau ordered enough paper ballots for all voters but had to follow state law on how many ballots should be provided to each polling place up front based on past turnout. The rest were kept in reserve at the bureau and delivered if polling places started running short.

The bureau calculated the initial supply of paper based on the turnout at each polling place in the last three primary elections, Harvey said.

However, Hunlock Township had an extremely high turnout, Harvey said.

“Once we learned that, we told them to use the ballot marking devices until they received more ballots,” Harvey said, emphasizing no voters were disenfranchised.

Township voter Barry Cairl said he was upset to arrive at his polling place around 2:30 p.m. and learn that there were no paper ballots, particularly after the county failed to adequately provide sufficient paper for the electronic ballot marking devices in the November general election.

Cairl said he was informed that the Hunlock Township polling place received 150 ballots and had contacted the election bureau earlier in the day that it was running short. He said poll workers told him they had gone two hours without paper ballots.

He and his wife had to wait in line approximately 15 minutes to vote on the ballot marking device.

“This is going too far with this election stuff,” Cairl said.

County Administrative Services Division Head Jennifer Pecora said she assisted bureau representatives in proactively delivering additional ballots to polling places throughout the county as a precaution. She traveled back and forth between Wilkes-Barre and the Hazleton area four times.