The error affects both Democratic and Republican voters and involves the instructions for the race for Superior Court of Pennsylvania. Instead of directing voters to select two candidates in the race, the ballot incorrectly said to pick just one.
The error revealed Monday marks the third election since no-excuse mail-in voting took effect in 2020 that at least some Lancaster County ballots were found to contain errors. Past errors required county staff to hand copy mail-in ballots returned by voters to new ballots that could be scanned properly.
Many mail-in voters reported receiving notices from the Department of State on Monday informing them that their ballot has been received and canceled:
"Your ballot has been received by LANCASTER County on 04/17/2023," the automated email read. "Your ballot status has been updated to canceled because a replacement ballot has been issued."
Erin Gibson, a Democratic committee member who is campaign-managing her party's slate of candidates for the Warwick school board, said Monday she came across the mistake Friday morning when she reviewed a sample ballot on the county elections website. That was around 10:30 a.m., she said.
Soon after, Gibson said, the erroneous sample ballot was no longer available on the elections website.
"Our concern here is that people will receive that first ballot, fill it out, send it back, think they've done their civic duty, and then when they receive that replacement ballot in a week or two, they will think it's junk mail or a scam, and throw it in the trash, and their (first ballot) won't be counted," Gibson said.
The county's announcement on Monday afternoon said mail-in voters who already received a ballot should discard it and wait for a corrected one, which will arrive in an outer envelope marked with the word "replacement." Any erroneous ballots already returned by voters will be voided, the county said, adding that most mail-in voters will start receiving ballots next week.
The county also said it worked to intercept mail-in ballots before they could be delivered, requesting all postmasters in the county to return them to the county elections office. As of Monday afternoon, 15,000 ballots had already been recovered, the county said.
Mail-in ballots must be returned to the county elections office by 8 p.m. on Tuesday, May 16. The deadline for voters to request a mail-in ballot is May 9.
In the 2023 Superior Court primary, three candidates are running in the Democratic primary: Jill Beck of Allegheny County, and Patrick Dugan and Timika Lane of Philadelphia. Two Republicans are running in the primary, Maria Battista of Clarion County and Harry F. Smail Jr. of Westmoreland County.
Administrative Nightmare
Though primaries typically see lower turnouts, they often are much more difficult for election officials to organize and administer, especially in municipal election years when the many local races mean ballots can vary widely based on voting precinct.
The complexity also derives from the fact that multiple ballot versions must be printed for each district to accommodate Democrats, Republicans and, where referenda or nonpartisan races are on the ballots, independent voters. This year, the home rule study commission in Lancaster city falls into this latter category.
In last year's primary, elections officials discovered an error that was attributed to ballot printing vendor NPC, based in Claysburg. The company accepted responsibility for the error, which affected the bar codes on about 16,000 ballots that prevented them from being properly scanned. The error forced elections officials to manually copy votes onto new ballots.
Lancaster County officials subsequently worked with NPC on procedures to better flag errors before printing, a step that helped convince the board of commissioners to keep working with NPC.
In 2021, Lancaster County ended its contract with Michigan Election Resources — now known as Plerus — and began seeking more than $23,000 in damages from the company after printing errors made thousands of ballots unscannable by elections office machines. County staff had to spend four days copying 12,630 mail ballots by hand.
Gibson said Warwick Democrats were planning to use copies of a sample ballot to educate voters on how to sort through the long list of cross-filed candidates and understand how the races will be presented on the ballot.
In past election cycles, Gibson said, party officials could view a sample ballot before they were printed and sent to voters. This time, she said, that didn't happen.
(c)2023 LNP (Lancaster, Pa.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
