Centre County prepares for ‘monumental task’ of counting mail-in ballots. Here’s the plan
Centre County has never taken on such a challenge, but officials are confident local election workers will be able to process 40,000 mail-in ballots in 12 hours.
At least, that’s the goal.
“That would be basically, taking our time, not rushing, making sure everything’s being done accurately,” Commissioner Michael Pipe said earlier this month, adding that there could be “unforeseen” issues and delays. “But the numbers that we’ve looked at in terms of how many volunteers we have, the type of machinery, the type of processing that we did in the primary, we’ve very confident that we can get that done in a very, very timely fashion while still being methodical, accurate and safe with the count.”
After months of preparation, training and anticipation, the county board of elections unveiled its plan to conduct a thorough, timely and accurate counting process on Tuesday.
County Administrator Margaret Gray described training poll workers as a “monumental task,” and for months, the county has worked to ensure the election is safe and secure while also making voting accessible. This year, 500 new people applied to volunteer on Election Day, but not every volunteer was needed due to social distancing guidelines and position availability. In total, Centre County will have about 1,000 election workers helping at the polls and in the processing room.
Pipe said that the June primary, when 19,000 mail-in ballots were processed, served as a sufficient trial run to count the influx of ballots.
“All of the equipment we’re using has already been used in the primary,” Pipe said. “We know it works. We know the joggers work great; the envelope opening machine works great. Again, the extracting is all manual hand-processed. We do have backups.”
But, the number of mail-in ballot requests has nearly doubled since June.
Of the more than 110,000 registered Centre County voters, over 37,000 have applied to vote by mail, according to county data. Almost 26,000 have already been returned to the elections office, satellite center or one of the eight secure ballot drop boxes stationed throughout the county.
To accommodate the number of ballots, Centre County reserved The Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center from Tuesday-Wednesday, where ballot processing is slated to begin at 7 a.m. on Election Day.
Despite pleas for lawmakers to allow “pre-canvassing,” Pennsylvania is one of several states that does not allow advance processing of early ballots. Counties can start opening envelopes when Election Day polls open, but they cannot start tabulating them until polls close at 8 p.m.
With 120 people helping to extract, scan, document and store ballots, as well as reporting issues that could disqualify a ballot, Pipe hopes to accomplish as much as possible before the polls close on Election Night. Processed ballots will then be sent to the county elections office, when staff begin tabulating.
“At a certain point in time, everything will sync up, and everybody will be doing their thing,” Pipe said.
The county plans to bring ballots to the Penn Stater in two phases. The first phase will consist of mail-in ballots cast by 5 p.m. Monday, and the second phase will be ballots collected between 5:01 Monday and 8 p.m. Tuesday, when drop boxes and polls close.
Those at the Penn Stater processing site plan to work until midnight, and the count will be live streamed by C-NET.
“Depending on when that second amount of ballots go over, it might be a thousand or so, but there will be two uploads to the system from the vote-by-mail processing group,” Pipe said.
Once processed, ballots will be boxed into a security container and transported to the Willowbank Building where they will be kept in the event of a recount. Counties are required to keep federal election records for two years.
“I don’t know how you could be any more thorough,” Commissioner Steve Dershem said.
Despite efforts from Pennsylvania Republicans, who made an appeal to overturn the three-day extension for counties to receive mail-in ballots, the U.S. Supreme Court did not grant a quick, pre-election review Wednesday.
But if the court revisits the decision, ballots received after Nov. 3 could be in jeopardy. As a precaution, state election officials said ballots arriving after Nov. 3 should not be counted and be kept separate while the legal issues are still at play.
“While the U.S. Supreme Court did not expedite a hearing, segregating the ballots means our constitutional concerns could still be addressed after the election,” state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Benner Township, said in a statement Wednesday.
As an added precaution, state and local officials are urging voters to return their ballots to their local elections office or a secure ballot drop box sooner rather than later.
“We know this fight may not be over and we are prepared,” Democratic Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Thursday. “The commonwealth has taken careful steps to ensure all eligible Pennsylvania votes will be counted and to stave off further anticipated legal challenges. We call on all voters to submit their mail-in ballots to a drop box or county election office as soon as possible.”
This story was originally published October 30, 2020 at 7:55 AM.
