Dallas City News

Luzerne County’s Election Bureau plans to perform a large uploading of data on completed mail ballots that have been received to date, which will in turn update information on the state’s online ballot tracker, county Election Director Emily Cook said Tuesday.

The uploading was planned for Tuesday evening.

It involves scanning each outer envelope bar code so the voters tied to those codes have verification their ballot was received through the statewide ballot tracking system.

The ballot tracker, an increasingly popular tool, is available at pavoterservices.pa.gov and requires voters to enter their name as it appears on the mail ballot application, their date of birth and county.

A bureau data upload also will provide more current statistics on the state’s daily online mail ballot report, which breaks down the number of ballots approved and returned in all 67 counties. This report is available at pa.gov.

The state said the high-level overview of mail ballot processing is based on data pulled once per day from the statewide voter database, known as the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) system.

It cautions that administrative practices for recording transactions in the SURE system vary by county, with some recording individual transactions as they occur while others recording batches at intervals.

“These varying practices may result in substantial changes to a county’s data from one day to the next,” it said.

On Monday, the county bureau had logged 56,377 approved mail ballot requests. Due to the still-pending upload, the state’s daily report said there were 48,916 mail ballots approved in the county as of Tuesday morning.

The state’s daily report provided this breakdown of county approved ballots by party affiliation: Democrats, 27,343; Republicans, 16,654; and non-affiliated or other, 4,919.

It said 39.5% of the approved ballots were returned by Tuesday morning — again, this number will increase with the county’s fresh upload.

To be counted, mail ballots must be physically in the election bureau by 8 p.m. on Nov. 5, and postmarks do not count in meeting the deadline.

Tuesday’s uploading also will continue the detection of mail ballots with defects that prevent them from being counted.

Following state guidance, the election bureau cancels ballots in the state tracking system if its ballot sorting machine flags missing voter signatures or handwritten date issues on outer envelopes or the absence of the required inner secrecy envelope.

While ballots can’t be unsealed until Election Day, the sorting machine uses weight to weed out those with missing inner secrecy envelopes. An outer envelope hole punch also indicates if the yellow inside envelope is not there.

When such fatal flaws are discovered leading up to the election, the bureau alerts impacted voters if they provided an email address on their mail ballot application.

Those receiving alerts of voided or otherwise deficient ballots will be able to appear at the election bureau to submit a new ballot or fill out a paper provisional ballot at their polling place on Election Day. Provisional ballots are reviewed last by the board to verify nobody is voting twice.

The county election bureau ended up reissuing mail ballots to 50 April 23 primary election voters because they were notified in advance of deficiencies that caused their initial ballots to be voided, officials had said.

As in the past, the election board also will supply lists of Nov. 5 general election voters with ballot defects to party leaders so they can attempt to contact those voters and inform them of their option to cast a provisional ballot at the polls before 8 p.m in a process known as curing.

In addition to the past curing list generated on Election Day, the board unanimously voted to compile a curing list the day before the election to give party leaders and voters more time.

County Manager Romilda Crocamo again thanked the bureau and all assisting employees for working long hours and voters for their patience.

Crocamo said bureau staff was unable to perform a mass mail ballot upload Monday evening because it was sealing ballot marking devices to prepare them for delivery to polling places — another required task.

Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.