Allegheny County elections division: ‘We got this’
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Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order late Monday extending by one week the deadline for election offices in six counties, including Allegheny, to receive absentee or mail-in ballots. They now have until 5 p.m. June 9 to receive absentee or mail-in ballots.
The other counties are Dauphin, Delaware, Erie, Montgomery and Philadelphia.
An election day unlike any other, featuring unprecedented technology, was set to take place and even before the governor granted the extension, the Allegheny County elections staff was making the point that they are prepared.
“We have practiced. We have walked through every scenario we can possibly think of,” county director of communications Amie Downs said Monday. “We have done everything that we can to prepare for anything that might occur, so we are pretty confident.”
When it became clear months ago that, due to covid-19 restrictions, the county would not be able to conduct a typical election, registered voters were sent mail-in ballots.
At a warehouse on the North Side, 188,000 mail-in ballots, out of 280,000 requested, are being stored. They were to be opened starting at 7 a.m. with three high-speed letter openers.
Those opened envelopes will then be placed into trays and turned over to employees, who will remove the ballots, opening them and back folding them so that they lie flat. Once a minimum number of ballots have been prepared, they will be counted by eight high speed scanners.
Monday evening, Allegheny County elections division Manager Dave Voye said the governor’s order won’t change Allegheny County’s goal of counting all ballots that are in-hand by Tuesday evening.
“This order does not change our process for tomorrow’s Election Day. All ballots received in the Elections Division office by 8 p.m. will be included in tomorrow’s count. As indicated previously, the intent is to remain and continue until all of those ballots are counted.
“After Election Day, we’ll begin to gather the mail received in the office that meets the governor’s order and will determine when and how those ballots will be counted. We will announce the process later this week, but intend to follow all Election Code provisions, including allowing observers to view the process.”
Voye thought the public would have a pretty good idea who is winning the primary races Tuesday night. But officials aren’t making any guarantees.
“We’ve never scanned 180,000 ballots before. And we don’t know the turnout, of course, so it’s hard to do the math but if everything goes smoothly and we have everything done by 8 o’clock and drop results into our data base at 8:05, I think that’s going to be 80% of our turnout,” said Voye. “It’s no more waiting until the absentee ballots are scanned at midnight to drop them into our last updated data base.”
Voye said there is a very distinct human element to the operation with some 150 staff members showing up by 6:30 Tuesday morning and another 80 to 100 checking in after the polls close.
“That includes scanner operators to letter openers to people just sorting ballots and extracting them from the ballot envelopes. It’s going to be a packed house,” said Voye adding that social distancing measures will be in place and everyone will be required to wear masks.
Having never overseen an election like this one, Voye admits to being nervous.
“There’s always a chance that a scanner can malfunction or break down but we are going to have representatives from the vendors here who can repair them on the spot.”