By Christina Kristofic | Pennsylvania Capital-Star
A new fight in the ongoing battle over voting in Bucks County erupted Saturday, after elections officials cut off the line of people at the main county election office who were still waiting to cast their mail ballots in person.
More than 60 people were standing in line and more were arriving at noon on Saturday when county elections officials came out and said they were cutting off the line at about 40 people, and some people wouldn’t make it inside. The office was scheduled to be open until 2 p.m. and officials had determined that was how many people they could help in the two hours that remained.
“That’s not fair!” people at the end of the line shouted. “I’m in line. I should be able to vote!”
Some called local news organizations. Some called the police. And some called the Bucks County Republican Committee. They all stayed in line.
“They’re just trying to get rid of people,” said Lisa Wolert, 45, of Perkasie, who was in line behind the cut-off point.
Bucks County Republican Committee Chairperson Pat Poprik, who was a fake elector in 2020, said she thought getting on-demand mail-in ballots “is the same as if they went to the polls.”
“I think it’s really disappointing,” Poprik said. “If someone took the time to come here and get in line, if they’re here by 2 p.m., they should be able to vote.”
If Republicans still had the majority on the Bucks County Board of Commissioners and Board of Elections, Poprik said, “I’m pretty sure we’d let the people vote.”
County officials said they are not trying to keep anyone from voting.
“The Board of Elections office is not a polling place. On-demand in-person mail-in ballots are not early voting. This service is offered as a courtesy to voters because we have the equipment to do so,” said county spokesperson James O’Malley. “We are happy to accommodate as many voters as we can, but the fact remains that this is not a polling place and our staff needs to be allowed time to fulfill their other duties in furtherance of carrying out the election.”
O’Malley said county election officials did not know the political affiliations of the people in line when they cut it off.
State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, chairperson of the Bucks County Democratic Committee, said he was sure there were members of both major parties in the line.
“It wasn’t as though they were only Republicans and the Board of Elections said ‘we’re not going to let them vote,’” he said. “That’s absurd.”
Santarsiero said he wished that Pennsylvania had “true early voting” where voters could go to polling places and cast their ballots before Election Day like they do in some other states. He said he also wished elections officials across the commonwealth could pre-canvass — open the mail-in ballot envelopes — before Election Day so the ballots could be counted more quickly.
“There are lots of things that we can do to make voting easier in Pennsylvania for everybody. The Democratic Party in Harrisburg has been pushing for those things for some time now,” Santarsiero added. “It’s ironic that Republicans are now complaining that this system is inadequate to allow them to cast their votes early because we are the ones who have been pushing for that for everybody.”
Pennsylvania mail-in voting law and how Bucks County is administering it
The state Legislature passed Act 77 in 2019, allowing Pennsylvanians to vote by mail without an excuse, and establishing rules for voting by mail.
Voters who want to cast mail ballots must apply for their ballots by 5 p.m. on the Tuesday before an election. The deadline is Oct. 29 for the Nov. 5 general election.
All mail-in ballots must arrive at the local elections office by 8 p.m. on the day of the election. Voters may put their ballots in the mail or a secure drop box, or deliver them to the elections office in person.
Each ballot must be sealed in a secrecy envelope. The secrecy envelope must be sealed inside another envelope, which the voter must sign and date. Ballots that do not meet those requirements will not be counted. The external envelopes have been the subject of numerous lawsuits since the 2020 election, with voting rights groups arguing that a missing or incorrect date on the envelope is not material to the vote being cast and that misdated ballots should not be disqualified. But courts have ruled that the law requires the date on the external ballot.
County elections officials are not allowed to open any of the mailed ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. If they find that a ballot has not been signed, dated, or sealed in the envelopes appropriately, they can contact voters and have them correct the ballots, but the voters must do so on Election Day, via a provisional ballot.
Election officials across the commonwealth have requested amendments to the election law, specifically to be able to open and process mail-in ballots before Election Day so they can count them faster when the time comes. State legislators have proposed amendments to the law, but none have passed.
Many of the state’s populous counties set up satellite election offices where voters can register, apply for mail-in ballots, drop off mail-in ballots and ask other election-related questions. In an effort to help voters get mail-in ballots early enough to return them on time, some counties offer on-demand printing of the ballots.
Bucks County opened its satellite election offices and began offering on-demand printing of mail-in ballots on Oct. 15. It posted the office hours on its website with a notice, highlighted in yellow, that says, “Due to high demand, wait times for in-person mail-in ballots may be longer than expected. To ensure all applications are processed by the end of the day, the office may need to stop accepting new applicants before the posted closing time. We appreciate your patience and understanding.”
O’Malley said the county has had long lines at its election offices every day since they opened. The wait times, he said, are because of how long it takes to prepare the ballots.
Each voter who goes to an election office gets a mail-in ballot application, fills it out and hands it to an election official. The official checks the application against county and state voter rolls to confirm that the person is eligible to vote by mail and hasn’t already received a ballot, prints the ballot for the voter’s precinct, and prints an envelope with a barcode unique to the voter. O’Malley said the whole process takes the election official 12 minutes for each application.
Voters can take the ballots home or fill them out in the office and hand them back to an election official before they leave. O’Malley said almost all of the voters who have had ballots printed on-demand have filled them out and returned them on the spot.
Bucks County has 489,050 registered voters, according to data from the state Department of State. As of Friday afternoon, the county had issued 134,638 mail-in ballots and 92,849 had been returned, O’Malley reported. He could not say how many mail-in ballots had been issued through the mail or in person at election offices because the county doesn’t keep that data.
As the mail-in ballots come in, whether in person or through the mail, election officials sort them by precinct so they can be counted with other ballots from the same precinct and set them aside until Election Day.
The ongoing battle for Bucks votes
Bucks County is one of the swingiest counties in Pennsylvania, the most important of the swing states.
Voters in the county are almost evenly divided between the major parties, with about 42% registered Republican, 41% registered Democrat, and the remaining 17% registered to third parties or without affiliation.
Voters in Bucks are known for splitting their ballots between Democrats and Republicans. For example, in 2020, tens of thousands of voters in Bucks voted for Democrat Joe Biden for president and Republican Brian Fitzpatrick for Congress.
And the county has long been regarded as a bellwether.
Presidential and vice presidential candidates typically visit Bucks County during their campaigns. In the current cycle, Republican vice presidential candidate and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance visited Newtown in September, Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris held a rally in Washington Crossing on Oct. 16, and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had a photo opp at a McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose on Oct. 20.
Bucks County votes are considered so crucial to the election that the county was the fake setting in a Russian disinformation video earlier this week. An anonymous Twitter user posted a video that the user claimed was someone destroying mail-in ballots that had votes for Donald Trump in Bucks County; political leaders on both sides immediately identified problems with the video and called it out as fake.
Why Bucks voters wanted mail-in ballots on-demand
Some voters said they requested ballots on-demand because they still have trouble trusting the mail-in voting process.
Election officials cut off the line just behind Cailey Kelly on Saturday. The 19-year-old Doylestown Township resident said she goes to college in Massachusetts and her mail-in ballot for the primary election arrived too late for her to fill it out and return it by the day of the primary election.
“I wanted to make sure that my presidential election ballot would come in in time, so I drove home this weekend to vote,” she said.
Harry Siegel, 60, of Upper Southampton, said he wanted a mail-in ballot on-demand because “In the past, I’ve seen my vote go in and it looked like it didn’t do anything. I want to make sure it gets in one way or the other.”
Lisa Wolert said she doesn’t trust mail-in voting.
“I’d rather get my vote in ahead of time, in case they fiddle with it, there’s enough time to fix it,” she said, without elaborating on what she meant.
Incorrect information on the vote.pa website did not help anyone feel better about the process. The site said the election office was open from 12 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, so voters who arrived at noon thinking they were early were shocked and angry to find out they would not be able to get ballots that day.
Several voters said they thought officials were “giving different dates on purpose to mess people up.”
Vote.pa is run by Commonwealth Communications, which is led by long-time Democratic strategist J.J. Abbott. He said Sunday that the site’s information is crowdsourced by “an amazing group of volunteers” who try to provide the most up-to-date data for the election offices and drop boxes in all 67 counties. They corrected the information about the Doylestown election office as soon as they learned it was incorrect, Abbott said, and paid staff are now checking the accuracy of all the information.
Abbott said no one involved with his organization was trying to mislead anyone.
O’Malley, the Bucks County spokesperson, said the only place anyone should look for information about county election office hours and drop box locations is the county website.
Bucks County will stop printing mail-in ballots on-demand on Tuesday because that is the last day county election officials can accept and process mail-in ballot applications, O’Malley said. After Tuesday, the offices will remain open to receive mail-in ballots and answer other election-related questions.
“Everyone has a right to vote and everyone who wants to vote in Bucks County will have that opportunity,” Santarsiero said.
“Our voting system is safe and secure. And as it did in 2020, it will render a result that is accurate and fair and represents the people’s voice.”
Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kim Lyons for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Facebook and Twitter.
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