With just under five weeks until the general election, Pennsylvania elections officials continue to push back against rhetoric that the election will be marred by widespread fraud.
Election officials say they have no reason to anticipate that the mail-in ballot process nor the ballot drop boxes that will be made available to voters at the county level will present any vulnerability to fraud or criminal tampering.
“Voters in Cumberland County should feel safe and secure that no matter which option they choose, whether to vote by mail or go to the polls, the election has always been secured and continues to be so,” said Bethany Salzarulo, the Cumberland County director of Elections and Voter Registration.
President Trump has recently fueled allegations that the mail-in ballot system and ballot drop boxes were vulnerable to fraud and tampering, and as a result, lead to rigged election results. The FBI and other election watch groups have all asserted that the county’s election process is safe and secure.
The coronavirus pandemic is expected to fuel a surge for mail-in ballots across the country. Pennsylvania officials have projected as many as 3 million people could vote by mail this fall.
The Legislature this year revised some of the elections provisions to adapt to the public health rigors rolled out amid the pandemic. The basic components of the law, though, remain in place, notably that mail-in ballots will be sent only upon request and only to registered voters.
“The process for mail-in ballots is the same as for absentee ballots, which we have had for years and years,” Salzarulo said. “They are handled the same way: safe and secured. If you trust the absentee ballot system, you should trust the mail-in system. It’s the same. It’s just on a larger scale.”
During last week’s presidential debate, Trump twice cited the case of nine ballots that were found in a trash can in Luzerne County.
In an online press conference, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar this week characterized the incident as a matter of clerical error and not intentional fraud. The temporary clerk has been fired and the matter remains under investigation.
But given the critical role that Pennsylvania is expected to play in the election - with its 20 electoral votes - elections officials across the state have had to address the seeming contrasting messages from the White House and the intelligence community.
‘We feel confident’
Those who have long worked on the frontlines of the election in Pennsylvania told PennLive they have full confidence in the election integrity and have no cause to think that the election will be marred by fraud.
“In Pennsylvania absentee and mail-in ballots have exactly the same safety protocol ensuring they are issued upon rewritten request to registered voters and each envelope that comes back is genuine and contains only the one ballot issued to that voter,” said Lancaster County Elections director Randall Wenger.
Like a majority of counties, Lancaster has seen an increase in the number of requests for mail-in ballots this cycle, which all elections officials attribute to the pandemic.
Lancaster County mailed out 63,000 mail-in ballots for the primary; and at the moment is poised to send out 80,000 mail-in ballots for the general election on Nov. 3.
Requests continue to increase daily by as much as a 1,000 a day, said Wenger, who said he refuses to politicize the debate. He gave assurances that the election process in Lancaster County would be characterized by integrity and fairness.
“It is secured,” he said.
Mark Walters, a spokesman for York County, underscored the idea that elections take place at the local level.
“It’s the county’s job to run an election,” he said. “There’s lot of noise on Facebook and wherever else questioning the integrity of voting by mail but if you really get down to it and look at what is required to vote by mail, there couldn’t be a more safe and secure way to vote especially in a pandemic. I encourage people not to listen to the rhetoric and propaganda and to not trust Facebook feeds as a source of information.”
Contrary to allegations circulating about the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to handle the increased volume of mail-in ballots, Bonnie Delancey, the Perry County director of elections, pointed out that the bureau experienced no mishaps or delays in the primary. She expects it will be the same in November.
Delancey said she has never experienced delays in the mail service delivering absentee ballots. However, she said, she has heard from some county residents who express a level of confusion as to how and when ballots can be dropped off.
“I have to say there have been some things reported by the news media that have caused a lot of problems with this,” she said. “Some people are concerned.”
Perry County will not offer a ballot drop box per se, although voters will be able to drop their ballots off at the Veterans Memorial Building, which houses the commissioners office. She said the box will be under camera surveillance, as it always has.
“We feel confident here, the staff and the elections board that we think everything will work out fine with the mail service for delivering ballots,” Delancey said.
The issue of the drop boxes has emerged central to the president’s claims that the ballot return system will be susceptible to fraud.
Trump has repeatedly seized on the idea that 80 million mail-in ballots will swamp and crash the system.
“There’s fraud. They found them in creeks. … They are being dumped in rivers. This is a horrible thing for our country,” Trump said during Tuesday’s debate.
Federal and state law enforcement agencies continue to investigate the two separate instances at the center of the presidents charge: the clerical error in Luzerne County and a Wisconsin incident in which three trays of mail were found in a ditch off a highway. Officials have found no evidence of wrongdoing in either.
Thad Hall may be a veteran elections official, but he is new to the process in Pennsylvania.
Hall moved to Mercer County from Arizona about a month ago and now is the county director of the Voter Registration and Election Bureau.
“I have no concerns that there will be fraud,” he said.
Hall noted that unlike Pennsylvania, 75 percent of ballots in his former home state of Arizona are cast via mail-in ballots.
“We never had any problems in Arizona and I don’t think we will have one here,” he said. “I see no reason why there should be any issue.”
Seeking a change in law
There are stakeholders, however, who continue to harbor some reservations about the ability to process mail-in ballots as quickly as officials and voters would like.
The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, for instance, is calling on the General Assembly to give counties additional time before Election Day to begin the time-consuming, manual work of pre-canvassing – opening envelopes and flattening ballots in preparation for counting.
“Without sufficient time, final election results may take days or weeks leading to intense scrutiny and nationwide headlines,” said Ken Kroski, spokesman for the association. “The more time counties have to undertake the pre-canvassing process, the better prepared they will be to provide timely results in a highly visible presidential election where Pennsylvania is clearly a battleground state, but counties in Pennsylvania will not sacrifice the integrity of the election in favor of speed.”
Under the current statute, Pennsylvania counties are permitted to begin counting mail-in ballots only after polls close on election day.
“If Pennsylvania does not have complete results on election night or shortly thereafter, it’s not because there is anything wrong with the election results, or the process, or because it indicates fraud of any sort, it is simply the sheer volume of processing ballots that will delay announcing results,” Kroski said.
Pennsylvania is one of many states where legal battles are being waged over election rules.
Republicans have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the state high court allowing elections officials to count mail-in ballots received up to three days after Election Day.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, widely seen as a win for Democrats, also permits voters to turn in ballots via drop boxes and blocks a Republican effort to allow partisan poll watchers to be stationed in counties where they do not live.
“I believe they acted improperly,” said Sen. John DiSanto, a Dauphin County Republican seeking re-election in the race for the 15th Senatorial District, which includes Dauphin County and a small part of Perry County.
DiSanto is also concerned about the integrity of the drop box system. He said the process bears no regulations, and as such, risk calling into question in the minds of voters the integrity of the election.
“Fundamentally I think that with in-person voting and legally cast ballots received by election day voters should have confidence in that,” DiSanto said. “Drop boxes that aren’t secured? I don’t know why we need them. We have mail boxes throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that people can drop their ballot into and feel secured that it gets in.”
Pennsylvania mail-in ballots, in fact, are now being sent out, in many cases before many states begin their mail-in voting.
Like Perry County, Mercer County will not have a drop box for ballots, but voters can drop off their ballots at the county elections office, which is in the courthouse.
Hall reiterates the Pennsylvania statute for mail-in ballots: that only the person casting the ballot may return the ballot to a drop box, meaning voters are not permitted to return ballots cast by family or friends.
“The Legislature clearly didn’t look at other states' statutes when they wrote theirs,” Hall said.
With 300,000 voters in York County, Walters said that in an ideal world the county would be able to place ballot drop boxes in each of the 72 municipalities in the state.
“It’s what we’ve got,” he said. “We can only put a box where the election office is.”
Under state law, counties are permitted to place drop boxes only in the official elections board office or official satellite offices. Few counties have official satellite offices.
The vast majority of ballot drop boxes will be monitored by county elections officials or sheriff’s deputies. They will remain locked, and in most cases, will be emptied several times a day as needed.
“It’s secure. It’s not going anywhere,” said Wenger, the Lancaster County elections director. “It’s locked.”
The Lancaster County ballot drop box will be placed in the vestibule of the Chestnut Street county building. Elections officials stress that voters should check with their respective county elections board (all have websites) to check time and extended schedules of the boxes.
Pennsylvania elections officials to date have sent out approximately 2.3 million mail-in ballots. The majority of ballots are on their way to voters, Boockvar said last week.
Of course, voters can vote in-person at the polls Nov. 3, or vote early in-person at their county election office if they have not yet applied for a mail-in ballot.
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