Apr 28, 2026 By Mike Jones 4 min read

Mail-in ballots began going out in Greene County late last week for the May 19 primary election, while the ballots from Washington County will start hitting the mail later this week due to the ongoing legal challenges involving one of the candidates.

Greene County Commission Chairman Jared Edgreen, who also chairs the county’s elections board, said they sent their more than 1,600 ballots out on Thursday and Friday, with the hopes they’ll start arriving in people’s mailboxes early this week.

“That’s been really a push in the (elections) department,” Edgreen said. “With mail being slower and not getting out (quickly) to the farthest reaches because of our rural county, we have pushed to get them out. If we have our ballot ready to go, then we’re going to make the push to get them out.”

Democrats hold a more than 2-to-1 advantage in requesting mail-in ballots in Greene County, with their party’s voters asking for 1,137 compared to the 467 applications coming from Republicans.

While Greene County is right on schedule, election officials in Washington County are about a week behind due to the repeated legal challenges to state Senate candidate Al Buchtan’s residency. Both the Commonwealth Court and state Supreme Court ruled Buchtan can remain on the ballot in his race against three-term state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Carroll, but he was required to list his home as Greene County rather than Canonsburg, where he moved to a rental house in October.

A subsequent request by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania asking Buchtan be removed from the ballot in the race for state committee representing Washington County further delayed finalizing the ballot following a special county elections board meeting Thursday to decide the issue. County elections officials left Buchtan’s name on the state committee section of the ballot, although the state GOP has said they will not seat him if he wins because he lives in Greene County.

All of that forced Washington County’s elections office to wait for a final decision, meaning the ballots were being printed and folded Monday and will hopefully begin going out later this week.

“Because of the challenges, we’re about a week behind than where we normally are,” Washington County Elections Director Melanie Ostrander said.

So far, the county has received 12,427 mail-in ballot requests, with 9,035 going to Democrats and 3,392 being sent to Republicans. That’s nearly 1,000 more than the 11,466 requested in Washington County during the last mid-term election in 2022.

The 46th State Senate District that Bartolotta and Buchtan are campaigning for includes all of Washington and Greene counties and the southern sliver of Beaver County. Edgreen said Greene County did not run into the same issues as Washington County because they did not have the last-minute challenge involving the state committee position.

“Really, we got to work with what we knew (at the time) with the Commonwealth decision,” Edgreen said. “We started reviewing ballots, printing them off and making sure everything was true and correct, and that’s when the state Supreme Court decision came down (April 10) and said it was correct. I thought it might hold us up, but it did not end up holding us up.”

The final day to register to vote or change party affiliation is May 4, and the last day to request a mail-in ballot is May 12. But Edgreen said voters requesting a mail-in ballot at the last minute would be pushing it since it would need to be sent, filled out and returned in a week’s time since they must be returned by the close of the polls on Election Day.

“That’s way too late,” Edgreen said. “It’s not going to work.”

The same goes in Washington County, where Ostrander is urging people to immediately fill out the ballot when they receive it. Voters can either drop their ballots off in the mail or deliver them directly to their county’s elections office. The Washington County elections office is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

“Once you receive your ballot, turn it in as quickly as possible,” Ostrander said.

The deadline for the ballots to be received by the elections office is at 8 p.m. on May 19.