Mail-in ballots heading out to voters in Washington County
Mail-in and absentee ballots will soon begin landing in voters’ mailboxes as elections offices across Southwestern Pennsylvania have started sending them out to people who requested them.
Washington County Elections Director Melanie Ostrander said her staff sent out the first batch of mail-in and absentee ballots Tuesday and will finish sending out the rest by Friday.
The elections office has received a total of 13,463 requests so far, with 10,065 going to Democratic voters, 2,521 of them heading to Republicans and 877 being sent to independent or unaffiliated voters. That is slightly higher than the 13,072 sent out in 2021.
Ostrander said she thinks people are becoming more comfortable using mail-in ballots nowadays after no-excuse mail-in voting was introduced in 2020 after a bipartisan bill was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed into law by then-Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf the previous year.
She urged people to put the completed ballot in the secrecy envelope, and then place that in the mailing envelope, which should be signed and dated or it won’t be counted.
“It’s getting better every election,” she said. “We’re having less undated, less unsigned, less without the secrecy envelope. But there are still people who are missing one of the steps, but there is also a lot more education out there.”
Ostrander urged people who still are considering voting by mail to get their applications in sooner rather than later to ensure they get them on time.
“You’re cutting it very close,” Ostrander said of the Oct. 31 deadline to apply for a ballot. “If it’s the 31st and you still haven’t applied, you should come to the office.”
Fayette County is also seeing an increase in the number of mail-in and absentee ballots being requested this year.
Of the 7,308 mail-in and absentee ballots that Fayette County has sent out so far, 5,677 were requested by Democrats, 1,305 of them went to Republicans and the remaining 326 are going to independent or unaffiliated party voters. The total requests this general election are already higher than the last off-year cycle in 2021, when 6,035 were sent out and 5,075 were turned back in, Fayette County Elections Director MaryBeth Kuznik said.
Fayette County sent out its ballots late last week, with the first ones arriving Tuesday and today, according to Kuznik. That should give voters nearly a month to return them ahead of the Nov. 7 general election with local, school board, county and statewide judicial races up for grabs.
“Please get them back as quickly as you can,” Kuznik said. “But take your time (filling out the ballots) and make sure they’re voting for the person they really want. If it gets close to the Election Day, they can bring them into the elections office any time.
People can still request their absentee ballots up until Oct. 31, which is one week before the election.
“If it gets that close, we’re not going to have time to mail a ballot out and have them mail it back,” Kuznik said. “Come into the office and you can sign up for one, fill it out here and turn it in immediately. You’ll be done and you won’t have to worry about getting it back to us.”
Mail-in and absentee ballots must be returned by the voters themselves – and not by a friend or relative – no later than 8 p.m. on Election Day.
People can either send an application to their county’s elections office, fill one out in person there or go online to www.vote.pa.gov to request one, which will then be forwarded to their local office for processing.