Dozens of Luzerne County voters correct mail ballot deficiencies

Dozens of mail ballot voters appeared at Luzerne County’s election bureau Monday to correct deficiencies that would have prevented their general election ballot from being counted, workers said.

These outer envelope errors involved missing voter signatures and handwritten dates, or those with dates outside the window between the county’s Oct. 13 mail ballot issuance and Election Day.

This is the first time the county notified voters of defects before Election Day.

Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of State Leigh M. Chapman publicly issued a release Friday saying county election offices were encouraged to contact voters whose Nov. 8 general election ballots have been cancelled due to outer envelope errors so the voters may have the opportunity to have their vote count.

After reviewing the new state guidance with the county law office, the bureau sent alerts Friday to voters with ballots missing required outer envelope signatures and on Monday to those with no dates or dates out of range, said Acting County Election Director Beth McBride.

For those without email addresses on record, a bureau assistant attempted to reach impacted voters by phone on Monday, McBride said.

Approximately 150 ballots had signature/date deficiencies, the bureau said.

Voters who were notified of deficiencies and were unable to appear at the bureau Monday will have the option to cast a provisional ballot at their polling place on Election Day, officials said. Paper provisional ballots are reviewed last by the county’s bipartisan Election Board during the adjudication process.

The bureau has early knowledge of which ballots have outer envelope defects because it is using a new ballot sorting machine, McBride has said. Previously, teams of workers started reviewing the outer envelopes and weeding out those with defects on Election Day.

As usual, the county Election Board will continue compiling lists of defects on Election Day and submitting the information to political party leaders so they can attempt to reach those voters — a process known as curing. This Election Day list also will include “naked” ballots not placed in required inner secrecy envelopes before they were inserted in the outer envelope.

Election Board members Alyssa Fusaro and Jim Mangan — the two Republicans on the five-citizen board — said they were uncomfortable with the state push for election bureaus to notify voters outside the Election Day curing process performed by the board.

Mangan said the guidance should have been issued sooner so both the bureau and board could have thoughtfully discussed a plan. The short notice also added stress on the bureau when it is already swamped with other election preparations, he said.

“I think it’s an overreach,” Mangan said of the state guidance.

County Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams credited the bureau for taking on the additional work and stressed the county law office reviewed the state guidance before the bureau proceeded.

“I’m sure there are some grateful voters who were notified and able to cure their ballots,” Williams said. “If there’s a legal way to help voters make their vote count, I’m always going to work towards that.”

In a related matter, several Pennsylvania groups represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court Friday night seeking to allow the counting of mail ballots without handwritten dates on the outer envelope. According to the Associated Press, the plaintiffs included state chapters of the NAACP, League of Women Voters and Common Cause. The filing argued refusal to count such ballots “because of a trivial paperwork error” could disenfranchise thousands of voters and would violate provisions of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that immaterial errors or omissions should not be used to prevent voting, the AP said.