Western Pa. counties prepare for Election Day as mail-in voting deadline looms
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With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, Unity’s Joyce Jacobs was one of hundreds of people who lined up Wednesday to cast their ballots at the Westmoreland County Courthouse in Greensburg.
Jacobs, a 53-year-old Trump supporter, said she never cast a mail-in ballot before. But this year she felt like it was her best option.
“I wanted to avoid waiting in line on Election Day. I wanted to come here early and get it done because I feel more confident with this system and not trusting the electronic voting machines,” Jacobs said.
Voters of all political stripes have been requesting and turning in mail-in ballots in big numbers — a departure from recent years in Pennsylvania when the number of Democrats voting early or by mail has dwarfed the number of Republicans doing so. Voters have until 5 p.m. Tuesday to request a mail-in ballot.
No-excuse, mail-in voting was implemented in Pennsylvania for the first time in 2020.
Former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, has raised alarms about the security and integrity of early and mail-in voting. On Wednesday, he told Fox News Radio that he remains “very mixed on it,” but he’s pleased by reports that show large numbers of Republicans are submitting their ballots before Election Day on Nov. 5.
Trump said he plans to vote early in this year’s election. A third party dropped off his mail-in ballot in Florida in 2020, a Palm Beach elections supervisor told NPR.
As of Wednesday morning, more than 1.1 million ballots had already been returned in Pennsylvania, according to the Department of State.
Democratic voters so far have accounted for more than 57% of the mail-in ballot requests, while GOP voters have accounted for 30% of all applications, according to the state.
As of Wednesday in Allegheny County, Democrats had cast more than 70% of the 142,511 mail-in ballots returned so far while Republicans had returned about 20% of the ballots, officials said.
In Westmoreland County, Democrats accounted for nearly 57% of the roughly 28,000 early votes cast so far compared with almost 36% for Republicans, officials said.
More than 2.7 million mail-in and absentee ballots were cast by mail in Pennsylvania four years ago as the coronavirus raged.
State officials said as of Wednesday, about 1.9 million mail-in ballots have been requested by Pennsylvania voters this election season. Allegheny County has processed the most mail-in ballots in the state, with more than 232,000 voters requesting to vote by mail. Westmoreland County has had nearly 54,000 mail-in ballot requests.
State election officials have cautioned that the large number of mail-in ballots could delay the reporting of election results.
By law, counties cannot start the counting process before polls open on Election Day.
“We’ll have over 220 county employees at the election warehouse in the morning to inspect and open the envelopes, flatten the ballots and make sure they are secured,” Allegheny County spokeswoman Abigail Gardner said.
She said most mail-in ballots are expected to be counted by 8 p.m.
“We feel great about the process,” Gardner said.
Westmoreland County Election Bureau Director Greg McCloskey said enough staff and equipment will be on hand at the courthouse to process and count up to 60,000 mail-in ballots by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
“We will have three rows of envelope openers and five tabulating machines in place, one more than we had in the last election,” McCloskey said.