Local election offices felt like they were running two elections last November thanks to the state’s mail-in ballot system.

The workload took a toll, with more than one-third of county election directors resigning or retiring in the past year.

Local offices say they logged endless overtime hours implementing a new mail-in system in a year with historic voter turnout.

“We work long hours for the presidential election, but this is way above and beyond what I ever expected,” said Lisa Dart, Carbon County director of elections.

The association representing County Commissioners in Harrisburg have proposed two reforms - an earlier deadline for mail-in applications and precanvassing. They’ll likely be on a long list of proposed reforms to the mail-in ballot system. But counties say that they’re needed sooner than later to alleviate the pressure that mail ballots have put on election directors and their staffs.

Mail-in voting was expanded to the entire state with the passage of Act 77 in 2019.

Many expected that it would take off slowly, based on other states that adopted it in the past.

But few could have predicted that a pandemic would hit the next year, during a presidential election.

Instead of mail-in ballot applications going up by 300 percent, they were up closer to 2,000 percent.

“In just a couple months, we moved to numbers we were expecting in 5-7 years. With the pandemic increasing that volume,” said Tim Benyo, chief clerk for the Lehigh County Election Board.

Record numbers

The 2020 election broke Pennsylvania’s record for voter turnout with 6.9 million people voting. More than 2 million requested mail-in ballots.

Local elections offices were faced with a massive workload processing thousands of applications. Voters could apply up to seven days before the election.

Rules governing remote drop boxes, missing signatures and naked ballots changed constantly due to appeals court decisions and guidelines from the Wolf administration.

Looming over everything were well-documented delays to the Postal Service. Throughout the month of November, and even later in some cases, election offices received ballots that were postmarked before Election Day.

Those delays also caused thousands of voters to “surrender” their mail ballots at the polls on Election Day and vote in person. Carbon and Schuylkill counties had to replenish the ballots at some polling places because of the unexpected voters.

There were hundreds more who registered for mail-in voting but showed up without a ballot. They could only vote via provisional ballot, which have to be hand counted.

The process of counting mail-in ballots took two to three days in many counties.

In order to handle the work, counties diverted staff from other offices to help with the task of processing mail-in ballots and applications. Lehigh County pulled in 85 workers from other offices to count their 76,000 mail-in ballots.

Carbon County totaled more than $38,000 in overtime between election staff and other offices who helped count ballots.

The combination of factors was too much for many of the directors. Twenty-three left their positions at some point in the past year. More are planning to retire in the future.

Schuylkill County Election Director Frannie Brennan retired in July. Lehigh County’s deputy clerk retired in October.

“If they had a chance to move on to greener pastures, I don’t fault them for it. It was a no-win situation last year,” Benyo said.

How to improve

The counties have two main ideas to help their election offices.

Through the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, they’re asking for an earlier deadline for mail-in ballots, and the ability to precanvass ballots.

Before Act 77, the deadline for absentee ballot applications was 15 days pre-election. Officials say it’s just not possible for a voter to apply, receive and return a ballot within seven days.

“I could just see the stress within the office, with being able to accommodate all the mail-ins that were put onto us all at one time because of the short deadline that we had,” said Al Gricoski, director of the Schuylkill County Election Bureau.

An early deadline would theoretically reduce the number of ballots returned at the polls as well.

The second idea is to allow counties to precanvass votes - open them and verify that they’re submitted by a voter. Those votes would still be scanned after polls close, like all the other ballots. CCAP says that an existing law prohibiting the release of information from a precanvass meeting would prevent any results from getting out before polls closed.

Commissioners have been meeting with state lawmakers online to discuss their ideas. State Rep. Doyle Heffley and Jerry Knowles are among those who have contacted their local election officials to get their thoughts on ways to make mail-in balloting more efficient.

It’s likely that CCAP’s recommendations will be just a few of the many reforms legislators will consider to Act 77. The Department of State and state appeals courts made several decisions which were opposed by Republicans before and after the election.

A lawsuit over whether ballots can be counted up to three days late if they’re postmarked on Election Day is still pending before the United States Supreme Court.

And election directors are focused on preparing for the next election.

Local election offices typically have plenty of work in odd-year municipal elections because of the large number of local races.

Thousands of people checked a box to receive mail-in ballots permanently. They’ll receive mail-in ballots whether they want to vote or not. And they’ll keep receiving them unless they complete a form saying they no longer wish to receive them automatically.

While the 2021 municipal election is unlikely to near November’s record turnout, election offices still expect a large workload with 2021’s mail ballots.

“This year it’s campaign finance, petitions, the local elections. It’s different, but it’s not going to be any easier,” said Sara May-Silfee, Monroe County director of elections.