Carbon County is gearing up for the presidential election on Tuesday, but postal service operations, as well as ever changing election regulations are causing frustrations to run high.

On Thursday, the commissioners spoke about recent issues surrounding postal delivery of mail-in ballots, including the fact that Carbon County is one of eight counties that has received completed ballots from voters in other counties when mail was delivered. Other counties that have reported receiving wrong mail-ins from the postal service include Lebanon, Perry, Fulton, Washington, Erie, Bucks and Cambria.

Commissioner Rocky Ahner, who was on the phone with the state regarding this problem early Thursday, said that Carbon County has received four ballots that isn’t theirs — one from a person who votes in Schuylkill and three from Luzerne and Lehigh counties.

“The solicitor and I were on with the liaison to the state this morning and I stressed to them that this has to be fixed. This is not something that they can wait until after the election to do,” Ahner said, asking what does the county now do with these ballots.

“Do we mail them? Do we hold them? What do we have to do with them?” he asked. “They are time stamped that they came here so it’s not the fault of the election office that we got Schuylkill County. This is something that was a post office problem and not the county.

“I don’t think any election department across the state should be held liable for this because of what the post office did,” Ahner added, noting that it is one thing to get a piece of mail that is supposed to go to your neighbor, not mail that should have been delivered 50 to 100 miles away. “That’s a problem.”

Ahner commended the county election office staff, which includes three employees and one from another department who went down to help with processing.

“It’s going to come back that it’s the elections department’s fault and it’s not. They’re doing the best job that they can and now they’re getting thrown into different situations. ... This isn’t an election (office) problem. This is a mail problem.”

Commissioners Mike Sofranko and Wayne Nothstein agreed that this is above the county election office and commended the staff for going above and beyond to make sure the election runs smoothly in Carbon County.

Sofranko said that if a voter has a question about anything election related, call the elections office and they would be more than happy to answer that question.

He also stressed that once that ballot gets put in the mail, it is out of the county’s hands until it is received again after it was completed by the voter.

Sofranko stressed that the commissioners were not blaming the postal delivery staff for the problem regarding the incorrect delivery location on those four ballots, but said it was the postal service operations as a whole.

“They (the postal workers) are doing the best they can to get all that postal work done,” he said.

Ahner and Nothstein said the problems surrounding this election are being compounded because of third party groups sending out mailers with registration forms that don’t go to the counties to process.

“People are sending for a mail in ballot and they’re not even registered,” Ahner said. “People then come to us, they’re complaining that they should have been registered. These things are confusing everything.”

“(Third party groups) are sending out multiple applications to all the people,” Nothstein added. “People get confused, especially the older ones. They fill out multiple applications and now that takes more time for our election workers who are already overwhelmed trying to follow state rules, state regulations and it’s becoming a major problem.”

Nothstein went one step further than the postal service issue and said that additional problems start at the state and federal levels because they aren’t working together to make and keep one decision.

“We can’t have the courts rule everything,” Nothstein said, referring to the latest court ruling in Philadelphia regarding mail-in ballots in just that county. “I have a feeling this election will not be over before the end of next year with all the lawsuits.”

He added that legislators need to start passing laws that stop third party groups from sending out these applications, as well as limiting the political ads flying around.

“There should be a limit on the amount of advertising we have to put up with,” Nothsteins said. “It’s just getting out of hand.

“The people in Harrisburg and in Washington, they got to get their crap together and sit down and come up with a compromise that make things better and easier on all our elections offices throughout the county. It’s getting very frustrating listening to the complaints that don’t have to be because they don’t know what they’re doing. Look what happened four years ago, how many elections directors resigned? Over 50% of them because of the garbage in the Department of State at the last minute, even on Election Day, changing their rules. How can you run an election like that? I blame a lot of it on our legislators. None of them were every county officials or worked in the county to know how to run an efficient elections. They don’t have the experience our election directors have.”