Mail-in ballots to begin arriving at homes this week
Thousands of mail-in ballots will begin arriving in people's mailboxes in Southwestern Pennsylvania this week less than a month before the Nov. 5 general election.
Elections workers in Fayette, Greene and Washington counties just started sending out the mail-in ballot packets after the final list of candidates for U.S. president were made official late last month following numerous court challenges by third-party contenders.
"We're still on target," Washington County Elections Director Melanie Ostrander said. "They'll go in the mail (today), so they'll start hitting mailboxes later in the week. ... We're all on the same time period."
While Allegheny and Philadelphia counties began sending out their ballots a couple of weeks ago, nearly every other county in the state began sending them out last week or early this week.
"What I'm telling my voters is expect to start getting them (this) week," Fayette County Elections Director Mary Beth Kuznik said. "People are excited. They are wanting them."
There is a large influx of mail-in ballot requests due to the expected higher turnout driven by the presidential election, although the number of applications are lagging well behind 2020's numbers when the COVID-19 pandemic pushed many to vote by mail rather than in person at the polls.
In Washington County, they have received 23,660 applications as of Friday, which is nearly half of the roughly 43,000 mail-in ballots sent out during the general election in 2020. Democrats have requested more than half of the total mail-in ballots this year, asking for 14,228 compared to the 7,214 by Republicans and 2,218 for unaffiliated party voters.
Ostrander expects the number of requests to increase over the next three weeks, but she doesn't think it will get anywhere near the pandemic-era figures. She questioned whether numerous court challenges about disqualifying errors on mail-in ballots – such as missing signatures or dates on the outer return envelopes – are prompting more people to plan to vote in person.
"I think it will increase, but I don't know how significantly," Ostrander said. "I expected it to drop (compared to 2020) but I did not expect it to drop the way that it has."
Fayette County is also falling behind on the number of requests compared to 2020. So far, they have received 11,071 requests, which is about half of the total they had four years ago. Democrats are also well ahead with applications, asking for 7,163 mail-in ballots compared to the 3,180 by Republicans and from 728 unaffiliated voters.
In Greene County, they have received about 1,839 mail-in and absentee ballot requests, which is less than half of the roughly 5,000 they sent in 2020. Greene County Elections Director Joe Lemley said his office is on schedule getting them sent out and the ballots should be delivered to people this week.
"All of our ballots started going out (last) week. All mail-in ballot applicants should be seeing them, at the earliest (this) week," Lemley said. "We're making sure we get these in the mail. We're right on pace where we want to be."
While people have called the Washington County's elections office asking when they will receive their ballot, Ostrander noted they're on a similar schedule as 2020.
"We had court challenges," Ostrander said about the timeline. "This is in line with what was done in 2020. There were court cases that challenged third party candidates appearing on the ballot."
Kuznik echoed that sentiment and said Fayette County is right on time.
"The courts tried to go as fast as they could, but they had to give it a fair hearing," Kuznik said of the challenges. "We couldn't finalize the ballot until we got an official list from the state."
All three elections directors also reminded the public that Oct. 21 is the last day to register to vote or change any aspect of their registration. The last day to request a mail-in ballot is Oct. 29, although the elections directors said that late date would be pushing up against the deadline to receive and then return the packet to the elections office by 8 p.m. on Nov. 5.
People can come into their elections office and request a mail-in ballot and fill it out immediately, although it typically takes 30 minutes to an hour for the staff to process the paperwork and produce a ballot for the voter to use.
