The rescheduled primary election is rapidly approaching, and voting this year is going to be quite a bit different than in the past.
Earlier this week, Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar and Gov. Tom Wolf held a press conference to talk about the availability of voting by mail.
Addressing the change, Wolf said the law had been signed last fall to allow voting by mail, and it has proven to be a fortuitous change since much of the state remains on lockdown from COVID-19 mitigation.
“We’re unlikely to eradicate COVID-19 by June 2,” Wolf said, adding that voting by mail would be the safest way for Pennsylvanians to participate in democracy.
“Go to Votes PA.com and request a ballot,” the governor said. “Even before the pandemic, people were signing up. It has been tremendously successful. This is a great option for people who want to forgo a trip.”
The deadline to apply for mail-in ballots is 5 p.m. May 26, and he encouraged people to apply as soon as possible.
Locally, McKean County elections director Lisa Pratt said she has seen an uptick, too.
“We are experiencing a large number of requests for mail-in/absentee ballots.”
While voting by mail is sure to be a popular option, Boockvar cautioned that it means election results may not be immediately available.
“We have had concerns,” she said. “Some counties have bought special equipment that can open all the ballots and high speed scanners to process them.”
In McKean County, Pratt said, “We do have what we need to process ballots as things stand today.
“This is only the second time that we will be using the central scanners, so I don’t have a good guess as to how long it will take to process the absentee/mail-in ballots,” she said. It likely would not be on election day. Pratt said, “A guess would be 2-3 days.”
The governor said he understands that timeliness is an issue.
Wolf said he anticipates a huge increase in the number of absentee and mail-in ballots that each elections office has to process, and he is looking to work with the legislature to move up the time to allow county offices to begin processing them.
“Right now it is 7 a.m. June 2,” the governor said. “I would love to see it moved up beyond that. These are the types of things that would help counties adjust to the big surge in votes.”
While mail-in ballots are an option, the traditional method of voting at a precinct will be available as usual, too.
“Polling places will still be open, though where you vote may change in this primary,” Wolf said. In some counties, polling locations are at nursing homes or facilities that may not be open during the pandemic. And in an effort to make the primary election as safe as possible, the state is looking to consolidate polling places, too.
In McKean County, Pratt said, “I am still working out whether we will have to combine any of our polling locations.”
If so, that information will be made public so people know where to vote. The current polling locations are listed on the county’s website under Departments, Voter Registration and Elections.
Some places in the state have had difficulty securing enough people willing to work at the polls. Boockvar said conversations are underway with the National Guard as a possibility to provide poll workers where needed.
“The details are not final yet,” she said, adding that “any Guardsman or woman would be serving in plain clothes. We’re working closely with the National Guard to see how that could be effectuated.”
Regarding safety at the polling locations, Boockvar said the Department of State has ordered “polling protection kits” with things like masks, gloves, floor marking tape to measure distances and cleaning supplies. “We will make sure voting is safe and secure on election day.”
May 18 is the deadline to register to vote for the primary
Anyone who applied for an absentee or mail-in ballot for the primary when it was scheduled for April can still use the same ballot for the June 2 date. “You don’t need to reapply,” Boockvar said.
