A Pennsylvania judge extended the in-person voting options in Bucks County due to long lines and complaints that selection officials were turning people away.
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit after the complaints.
OK, here’s the thing about Pennsylvania: Early voting isn’t what you think it is in other states.
It’s called “on-demand” voting. It started when the state passed Act 77 in 2019, which established mail-in voting.
This early voting takes place at county election offices, not polling stations. From The Federalist:
Voters who choose the mail-in ballot must request a ballot by the deadline — Tuesday, Oct. 29.Once completed, the voter may mail it in any mailbox; drop it in a county ballot drop box; or, the preferred method for many voters, fill it out on the spot and hand it in at the counter of the county election office. That has become known as on-demand mail-in voting.This ballot is stored with all the other mail-in ballots and counted with them, but for those voters who would not trust an envelope of $1,000 cash in the mail, handing the ballot to an election worker feels more secure.Despite the Oct. 29 deadline to request a mail-in ballot, voters still have until election day, Nov. 5, to return it to the election office by hand, mail, or drop box.
So it’s in-person mail-in ballot voting:
The voter gets to the counter, asks for a mail-in ballot request form, and fills out the form. There is no poll book, so the election worker runs the individual’s information through the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) computer system to make sure he is a registered voter, eligible to vote in the county. Then they tell the SURE System this voter has requested a mail-in ballot, print a ballot specific to the voter’s precinct, and hand the voter the mail-in packet, which includes two envelopes and the ballot.The voter fills out the ballot, seals it in the inner and outer envelopes, signs and dates it, and hands it back to the election worker.To move things along, voters are given a space to step to the side and fill out the ballot. They do have the option of placing it in the drop box outside the building, mailing it, or bringing the completed ballot back another day.
The counties only prepared for the “mail-in ballot requests and accept ‘on demand’ mail-in ballot returns.” The Federalist explains it comes down to the signature polling book:
On Election Day, extra staff and volunteers are manning polling places across the county. Voters sign their names in an electronic or paper poll book.To prepare the poll book, counties must give the state all voter information by midnight on Oct. 29, James T. O’Malley, a Bucks County spokesman told The Federalist.Only eligible voters’ names go in the book. So if you received a mail-in ballot, your name does not go in the poll book. It is a guard against people voting twice.On Election Day, all the ballots are printed, and after voters sign the poll book, they are handed a ballot, walk to a voting booth, mark their ballots, and then place them in the scanner to complete the voting process.
Bucks County spokesman James T. O’Malley told The Federalist that mail-in voting has caused massive lines because they only “have one printer that can print these ballots” and only one ballot at a time.
“Most days that this on demand voting process has been going on, we’ve had to go out and cut off the line at a certain point,” continued O’Malley. “We estimate that this process takes 12 minutes per voter from the time they get to the front of the line. That does not include the time you wait to get to the front of the line, which could be hours. They’re able to calculate how many people they could serve within regular business hours, and then at a certain point they cut off the line and they say, this is the last people we can serve today for on demand, mail-in voting.”
Oh, look. The AP blamed the Trump campaign when both campaigns have been telling their voters to vote early:
But Bucks County, like other counties in Pennsylvania, allows voters to apply for a mail-in ballot in person at the elections office and receive it there, a time-consuming process strained to the limit by Trump’s exhortations to his supporters to get out and vote before Tuesday’s deadline. Voters can also fill it out and hand it in at the office.
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