Why Centre County was short on Republican ballots during Tuesday’s primary election
A handful of Centre County precincts temporarily ran short on Republican ballots during Tuesday’s municipal primary election, one of the county’s top executives said Wednesday.
Several precincts were short, but county Commissioner Michael Pipe said poll workers were able to use alternative means — including printing new ballots — to ensure voters cast their ballots.
“Ultimately, I take responsibility for this error,” Pipe, a Democrat, said. “We were able to troubleshoot and — at the end of the day — get ballots out to where they needed to be. Voters, when they were at their polling location, would’ve had an opportunity to vote.”
The temporary shortage amounted to a calculation error, all three county commissioners said. There was “nothing nefarious” about the shortage, Republican Commissioner Steve Dershem said.
State law dictates the minimum amount of ballots that should be printed. The formula uses the highest number of ballots cast in any of the three previous municipal primary elections, plus 10%.
The county relied on a spreadsheet to tabulate the amount of ballots, which proved to be incorrect for some precincts. Some of the remaining precincts had excess ballots for both the Republican and Democratic primaries, Pipe said.
“We didn’t have enough in some precincts, we had the correct amount or we had an excess. We had some precincts that had more ballots than they would ever need because the formula was off,” Pipe said. “It’s something that we can fix easily, but it’s the kind of thing that had an effect on Election Day. It’s something I take responsibility for; it should not have happened. But at the end of the day, thankfully, it was a problem we could solve.”
More than 27,000 people voted in Centre County, including more than 8,750 by mail, according to county data. About 2,000 mailed ballots were still being counted Wednesday.
In a statement late Tuesday, after the polls closed, Acting Secretary of State Veronica W. Degraffenreid acknowledged polling places in several counties ran out of ballots but said the election, overall, ran smoothly.
Polling places that were short of ballots “quickly took steps to supplement their supply and voting proceeded in those counties uninterrupted,” Degraffenreid said.
This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 4:38 PM.