Montco’s mail ballot processing issues last month preview consequences for November

Montgomery County officials are working to remedy internal issues that contributed to 183 voters receiving the mail ballots just three days before the primary election last month — endangering their ability to return them on time.

But the county officials says another factor was out of their control — a state law that resulted in just 30 days for county election offices to prepare, print, and distribute ballots before the election.

That law could cause delays in November when Pennsylvania election offices confront more voters and higher stakes in an election that could decide control of both the White House and Senate.

State law says counties may begin processing mail ballot requests 50 days before an election. But the candidate list for the primary was not final until 30 days before the April primary election, which created a tight time frame for election administrators to process and distribute ballots.

“Every day matters when the court is only giving you 30 days from certification to election,” Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija, a Democrat who chairs the Montgomery County Election Board, said during a recent board meeting.

The truncated timeline does not guarantee mail ballots will go out late, but it does make it more likely because of the time pressures placed on election offices. And it leaves little room for even normal delays in the process. If ballot access for independent candidates, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are challenged in court ahead of November, the appeals process could once again limit the amount of time counties have.

Changes to the law before November are unlikely.

Makhija and other Montgomery County commissioners have indicated plans to push the Pennsylvania General Assembly to change candidate filing and appeal deadlines after this election — in hopes that future elections will give counties more time to complete and distribute ballots.

But another round of delays in November could harm trust in elections, especially as former President Donald Trump continues to spread lies about Pennsylvania’s 2020 election.

“When notices of delays come out, it just erodes the trust,” said Christian Nascimento, the chair of the Montgomery County GOP. “If you believe in the integrity of elections, and you want people to be as enfranchised as possible, you have to recognize that there is a group of people in the county who don’t trust it. And so you have to be extra diligent about making sure that the process is flawless.”

After ballots are certified, election officials in Montgomery County and across the state have to proofread their ballots, perform quality checks on their systems, print ballots, and mail them to voters.

“Everything has to be perfect for the entire operation before the mail ballots are able to start going out the door,” said Frank Dean, the county election director.

It’s a detailed process that can be pushed back a day or two at various steps. For instance, if a formatting error is found on any ballots, the entire proofing process has to happen again. In Montgomery County’s case, their primary ballots went through three rounds of proofing before they could be sent off to the printer, where they were then delayed by a backlog.

“The timelines that counties have to work with shouldn’t be so short that we have to be in a ‘fingers-crossed’ situation that everything runs super smooth in the proofing process, at the printer, and with USPS,” Montgomery County Chief Operating Officer Lee Soltysiak said.

The U.S. Postal Service advises that any voters mail their ballot back to an election office at least one week before the election to ensure it arrives by the 8 p.m. Election Day deadline. But voters also have until a week before the election to request their mail ballot.

“This delay was Montgomery County this time. It could very well be another county the next time,” said Jamila Winder, the Democrat who chairs the Montgomery County Commission.

When ballots are approved late, counties sometimes must consider moving forward on preparing ballots before they know exactly who will be on them, said Lisa Schaefer, the executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.

“We’ve always seen challenges to candidates on the ballots and so we rely on the courts to resolve those in some kind of a timely fashion, which doesn’t always happen,” she said.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly is unlikely to take up any changes to the timeline before voters go to the polls in November. But Rep. Carol Hill-Evans, a York County Democrat who chairs the House Committee on State Government, said the state should act to help counties.

“If they want more time, give them more time,” Hill-Evans said, though she also said she had not looked into the possibility of changing candidate filing deadlines.

The Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement the office is open to “any common sense effort that does not make it harder for any registered voter to cast their ballot and would allow counties to finalize and mail their ballots earlier.” The statement, however, noted that those decisions rest with lawmakers.

In the meantime, election officials in Montgomery County said they are working to reevaluate their own internal processes and contracts to prepare for the November election, when the stakes and turnout will be much higher.

Makhija, the chair of the board, said he was meeting with the county’s vendors about turnaround times and had directed the county’s solicitor to renegotiate contracts. He also advocated for devoting “significant resources” to hiring additional staff within the county’s internal voter services department.

“Now that I’m in a position to make changes, I will eat, sleep, and breathe election work until every voter has their voice heard and the 2024 general election is duly certified,” he said.

Montgomery County Commissioner Tom DiBello, the Republican on the county’s election board, said he wants the county to hold regular election board meetings to ensure they are on track.

“I want people to feel and have confidence,” he said.