Pa. bill could 21-day start on processing mail-in ballots

More than 1.8 million voters chose mail-in ballots for the June 2 primary, a surge that delayed results for some counties by days.

Election workers were allowed to begin processing ballots once the polls opened at 7 in morning on Election Day, but state law prevented them from tallying the votes for another 13 hours.

A bill proposed by state Sen. Steve Santarsiero, D-10, of Lower Makefield, could give those election workers a 21-day head start on processing those ballots.

Santarsiero said Thursday the bill, which should hit the Senate floor this month, is needed to prevent the same bottleneck of results in the Nov. 3 election, a race expected to draw record voter turnout.

The bill would not allow counties to tally votes before the polls closed.

Mail-in ballots were allowed by Act 77 of 2019, giving voters a chance to cast their ballot up to 50 days prior to an election.

A bill earlier this year pushed the primary election back from it’s original April 28 date due to the coronavirus, and Santarsiero said debate over that bill did include a similar provision but was ultimately dropped.

Voters could only previously vote by mail through an absentee ballot, but only if they were not able to vote the day of elections for one or more specific reasons like a religious holiday or active duty military service.

In his cosponsorship memo, Santarsiero said there were 107,000 absentee ballots throughout the state in the 2016 presidential primary.

Mail-in ballots in Bucks County alone came in just shy of that previous primary at just over 101,000 ballots cast by mail in June.

While the pandemic may have been a factor for many voters who did not want to go to the polls in person, many state and county officials say the Nov. 3 race will likely see record turnout at the polls and by mail.

“If anything, you’re going to see a significantly higher number of mail-in ballots in the fall,“ Santarsiero said Thursday.

Bucks County Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo has been advocating for some kind of leeway from the state after seeing results trickle in throughout the week after the primary.

“We’re used to having most of the results in on election night, and if these state laws stay the way they are ... there is just no way that we’re going to see that,” DiGirolamo said in a phone interview this week.

The county alone can’t implement changes to how it can count mail-in ballots, that’s a power DiGirolamo has said lies with the legislature.

The county recently formed a task force of county and state officials to lobby for those changes in Harrisburg.

DiGirolamo and state Reps. Frank Farry, R-142, of Middletown, and state Rep. John Galloway, D-140, of Falls, are members of the task force that had its organization meeting Friday.

While Santarsiero’s bill could be one way to prevent slow election returns, DiGirolamo said the task force will be seeking multiple solutions after consulting with the county’s Board of Elections Director Tom Freitag and Chief Clerk Gail Humphrey.

“We want to make sure every vote counts ... that’s the cornerstone of our democracy, access to democracy,“ DiGirolamo said.

Humphrey said during a prior online county town hall meeting that allowing early processing of mail-in ballots would go along way for fast election results.

More than 71,000 Democrats and 29,000 Republicans voted by mail in Bucks County, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of State.

More than 9,100 mail-in ballots were counted on June 2 alone in Bucks County, with another 1,700 co unted the day after.

Between 20,000 and 26,000 ballots were counted after June 2 in Delware, Montgomery and Philadelphia, with over 9,500 ballots counted in Philadelphia since June 10.

Santarsiero’s office confirmed nine Democratic Senators are expected to cosponsor his bill as of Friday afternoon.