Luzerne County Courthouse File photo Due to continued missing signatures, Luzerne County’s Election Board discussed the possibility of adding yellow highlighting on provisional ballot envelope lines that must be signed by voters and poll workers.
Paper provisional ballots are cast at polling places when workers determine additional voter verification is needed.
Every election, the board is faced with provisional ballots missing outer envelope signatures, prompting board Chairwoman Denise Williams to place the matter on Wednesday’s meeting agenda.
A missing voter signature is the subject of pending litigation in the tight April 23 primary election Republican race for state representative in the 117th District between incumbent Mike Cabell and challenger Jamie Walsh.
Lake Township voter Timothy J. Wagner had signed the outer envelope once but not a second time when he handed it to the poll worker. The board had accepted the ballot, and a county Court of Common Pleas panel agreed with that decision. On appeal, two of three Commonwealth Court judges presiding over the matter granted Cabell’s request to reject Wagner’s ballot due to the missing signature. Walsh has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to accept the ballot, and that court has not yet issued a decision on whether it will take up the matter.
Williams said the election bureau has stressed the signature requirement during poll worker training, but highlighting would be “another proactive step” to combat the ongoing issue that could cause a provisional ballot to not be counted.
The board may need to seek a variance from the Pennsylvania Department of State to add highlighting, Williams said.
As a result, Williams did not call for a vote and said she will seek legal input from county Assistant Solicitor Gene Molino, who had provided the board with advance notice he was unable to attend Wednesday’s meeting.
Board Vice Chairwoman Alyssa Fusaro said she supports the highlighting but believes it may be something the Department of State would have to implement statewide. With legal input, the board could draft a formal letter asking the department to add highlighting, she said.
County Election Director Emily Cook agreed highlighting would be helpful.
Poll worker training emphasizes provisional ballot signature requirements, but the problem persists, Cook said.
She cautioned provisional envelopes already have been ordered for the upcoming November general election.
If the highlighting is allowable, Fusaro said the county may be able to highlight the signature fields by hand on the in-stock envelopes. The highlighting could then be incorporated into future envelopes by the outside printing vendor, she said.
Other initial provisional challenges in the 117th District included outer envelope issues associated with stickers for voters to track their ballots and unchecked party affiliation boxes.
Cook told the board Wednesday the bureau’s poll worker training program already has been updated to put more emphasis on all provisional ballot requirements for the November general election.
Poll worker pay
The board unanimously voted Wednesday to approve an extra stipend for poll workers attending an additional training session.
Poll workers receive $195 to work Election Day in addition to a $20 training stipend.
Last month, Williams said she learned some poll workers received $40 stipends if they attended both a regular training and a special electronic poll book training before the April 23 primary election.
Board members said they supported the change for workers attending both trainings but believe it should have first been approved by the board, which is why they acted Wednesday.
Late ballots
In another unanimous vote, the board approved Williams’ motion to review 172 mail ballot envelopes that arrived after the 8 p.m. deadline on primary election day.
Under state law, these ballots cannot be opened and tallied because they were not physically in the election bureau before the deadline.
Williams said she wants to look at the municipalities to determine if they are disproportionately from certain regions and check the postmarks to determine the time spans between mailing and delivery to the election bureau.
Another 245 mail ballots were returned as undeliverable before the April 23 primary.
Cook told the board she still plans to review these ballots to determine the reasons and make sure voter information is up to date.
Williams has noted there were 307 undeliverable ballots in the November 2023 election and 168 in the 2023 primary.
Mail ballots must be sent to the voter’s address of record and cannot be forwarded to other addresses by the postal system, officials said.
Cook said Wednesday she cannot conduct her review of the 245 ballots until all adjudication concludes in the 117th District race.
The undeliverable ballots and other primary election ballots with deficiencies remain sealed in a cage, and Cook said she is not unlocking and touching these items until the litigation is over so there can be no allegation the election bureau did anything untoward regarding the records.
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