Thousands of mail ballots remain unaccounted for in Erie as judge orders elections board to extend hours

An Erie judge on Friday ordered the county’s board of elections to remain open through the weekend after as many as 17,000 mail ballots may not have been delivered to voters who requested them and hundreds more received a ballot intended for someone else — a major issue caused by the mail ballot vendor and likely to cause vote-counting delays in a bellwether part of Northwestern Pennsylvania.

The United States Postal Service, the Erie County board of elections, and its mail ballot vendor, ElectionIQ, “are unable to accurately determine the delivery status” of more than a third of all requested mail ballots in the county, according to the order from Erie County Court of Common Pleas Judge David Ridge. An additional 1,200 residents who requested mail ballots to out-of-state residences, such as universities, did not receive their mail ballots, the order said.

The mail ballot issues in Erie have persisted for weeks, after the county announced that about 300 voters received ballots intended for others in addition to their own because of errors made by Ohio-based ElectionIQ.

The judge’s order now paints a much more disastrous picture just four days before Election Day: Officials estimated in hearings on Thursday and Friday that more than 375 mail voters received a ballot intended for someone else in addition to their own, and between 13,000 and 17,000 mail ballots are unaccounted for.

» READ MORE: Pa. Democratic Party sues Erie board of elections over up to 20,000 missing mail ballots in the bellwether county

Thomas Talarico, the attorney representing Erie County’s board of elections in the case, said the 17,000 ballot estimate is “exaggerated and extreme” and was calculated based on the number of voters who had not yet returned their mail ballots, and that not all might be missing. Of the 42,152 Erie County voters who requested a mail ballot, 16,330 are still outstanding, according to Department of State data.

“We’re all confident that in spite of the mail ballot delays, that everyone will ultimately have the opportunity to vote,” Talarico added.

Erie was one of three counties to flip from voting for Barack Obama in 2012 to former President Donald Trump in 2016. It was also one of two, along with Northampton, to flip back to Biden in 2020 — though by only about 1,400 votes.

Ridge ordered the election board to remain open through the weekend for extended hours, to add an additional printer to its offices in the Erie County Courthouse to reduce wait times — which previously lasted between two and three hours — for affected voters to get a new ballot, and to collect enough ballots and provisional ballots for affected voters to use on Election Day.

He also ordered the county to release the names of the out-of-state voters and hire an overnight delivery service to ship them replacement mail-in ballots. The county is already in the process of reaching out to all 1,200 out-of-state voters by email to offer to send them a new ballot, Talarico said.

The Pennsylvania Democratic Party sued Erie County’s board of elections on Tuesday, alleging that 10,000 to 20,000 voters who requested mail ballots did not receive them and needed an injunction to require the county to take additional actions so all voters could cast their ballots. The Pennsylvania Republican Party has since been allowed to join the suit, according to the Friday order.

While Republicans and Trump have already filed several legal challenges across the state to litigate which mail ballots get counted on Election Day, the filing in Erie marked the first lawsuit the state Democratic Party has filed over mail ballots ahead of Tuesday’s election.

» READ MORE: Activists are challenging the eligibility of hundreds of voters in Philly’s suburbs. Experts say the effort is legally baseless.

Erie voters who received a duplicate ballot and those who did not receive their ballot must be contacted by the board of elections and given the option to cancel their past ballot, and all of the affected ballots must be segregated for further review post-Election Day, the judge ordered. County employees are driving to the homes of some of these voters to offer them these options, Talarico said.

The mail ballot issues will likely cause delays in counting Erie County’s vote in what’s expected to be a presidential race decided by just thousands of ballots in Pennsylvania.

“It will definitely be affected, but we’re prepared for that,” Talarico said, adding that the county has hired extra sheriff’s deputies and made additional accommodations for party watchers.

The county has not yet paid ElectionIQ for its mail ballot services and will likely take legal action against the vendor for the alleged errors, Talarico said. The county claimed that the vendor had multiple printing errors that caused the ballots to be coded incorrectly, was often unresponsive to county questions, and more.

All voters who did not receive their mail ballot are eligible to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day.