While counting mail-in votes Tuesday, the election directors of Elk, Potter and Cameron counties set aside some time to briefly discuss a variety of topics with The Era, such as mail-in ballots, issues they were facing and voter turnout.
According to Sue Millard from Elk County, the office sent out roughly between 4,500 and 4,600 mail-in ballots, with only 750 still not received as of Monday night. Meanwhile, Sandy Lewis from Potter County said the office sent out 1,954 mail-in ballots, with 366 ballots outstanding as of 6 p.m. Tuesday, and Brenda Munz from Cameron County said their office had distributed 811 mail-in ballots, with only 93 outstanding ballots as of 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Directors from all three counties said polling sites were running relatively smoothly, with only a few snags reported, such as a few technical difficulties with voting machines that were quickly solved.
“We had a couple issues but they were easily resolved,” explained Lewis. “Some of them were like the cards were jamming in the machine a little bit, but besides that, everything was running well.”
It was also unanimously agreed upon that the voter turnout was very good at all of the polling sites.
“There has been a very good turnout everywhere,” noted Millard, while Munz said numbers were “up pretty good” after personally visiting a few of the polling places.
With the increased volume of mail-in votes, official numbers may be a bit delayed this year, though all three counties expected to have preliminary, unofficial numbers by Tuesday night.
The Era was unsuccessful in reaching any of the Democratic or Republican party chairs in any of the counties Tuesday, though was contacted by Andres Anzola with the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.
Anzola relayed that, according to data from the Department of State, as of Tuesday morning, Pennsylvania voters had returned 2.5 million mail ballots, with nearly 63% of mail-in ballots requested by registered Democrats and 25% requested by Republican voters.
When asked why Pennsylvania is going to play such a pivotal role in this election, he responded that “Pennsylvania remains so important because it was one of the handful of battleground states that sent Trump to the White House in 2016 and will be critical in his defeat.”
