This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting. Sign up for Votebeat's free newsletters here.
After a printing error forced an unprecedented number of voters in Chester County’s Nov. 4 municipal election to cast provisional ballots, the county Board of Elections ultimately accepted the vast majority of those ballots.
The county had left unaffiliated and third-party voters out of the printed pollbooks that are used to check voters in at voting locations. For hours on Election Day, these voters either had to wait for supplemental pollbooks to be delivered or use a provisional ballot — a last-resort voting option used when there is some question about the voter’s eligibility.
In total, the county received about 12,600 provisional ballots — or roughly 6.4% of the total ballots cast in the county — more than in any other election in recent history. Roughly 11,200 of those ballots were counted without issue after the county confirmed the voters’ eligibility.
However, during the review process last week, the Republican Committee of Chester County challenged more than 1,100 provisional ballots on various deficiencies, including missing signatures from voters or poll workers, or missing secrecy envelopes, which are required for Pennsylvania’s mail and provisional ballots. Roughly 300 other provisional ballots were rejected for other reasons, such as the voter not being registered in Chester County to vote.
Ultimately, at a hearing that lasted more than five hours Monday, the party dropped most of its objections, though it still challenged provisional ballots that were not placed in a secrecy envelope and ballots where the affidavit portion of the outer envelope, which contains a place for a voter to sign and write their information, was unsigned by the voter.
The county commissioners, who also constitute the Board of Elections, voted 2-1 to accept the ballots where the voter had not signed in the right place on the outer envelope or that were not placed in a secrecy envelope. They unanimously rejected the three ballots that were not in an outer envelope, arguing that, without that envelope, they could not confirm the voters’ eligibility.
Many voters and poll workers also testified at the hearing Monday, describing hectic and confusing scenes from Election Day.
One judge of elections — the chief official at a polling place — described feeling guilty when she realized that, in the confusion of the day, she had neglected to give 18 voters a secrecy envelope with their provisional ballot.
“I made an error,” Edith Jones, the judge, said while holding back tears. (That error did not, however, lead to any voters being disenfranchised.)
The hearing did not help clear up how unaffiliated and third-party voters were left out of the poll books in the first place.
The local GOP’s attorney, Dolores Troiani, tried to ask the county election director if anyone had reviewed the poll books before Election Day, but a lawyer for the county interjected before the election director could answer, saying it was not relevant to the purpose of the hearing.
The county said it had selected West Chester-based law firm Fleck Eckert Klein McGarry LLC to investigate the failure. An update is expected at the Nov. 21 Board of Elections meeting.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.