HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania’s 2023 primary election on May 16 marks four years since the state introduced no-excuse mail-in ballots. With those four years of experience under their belt, election officials said they have worked out most of the snags that caused counting backups in previous elections.
For example, Lancaster County didn’t finish counting ballots until 3 a.m. in the 2022 November general election.
“We’re getting better every time,” said Lancaster County Commissioner John Trescot. “Now we have a really experienced group of volunteers. We now have high-speed envelope openers. For this election, we’ve added six new high-speed scanners.”
Trescot said he expected nearly all ballots to be counted well before midnight.
Other county election officials had similar timelines. Dauphin County Election Director Jerry Feasor said he expected 99% of ballots would be counted by 8:30 p.m.
Cumberland County Elections Director Bethany Salzarulo said she expected unofficial results to be available by 8 p.m.
Another reason for the quick counting this year is the expected low voter turnout. Turnout is generally lower for primaries than general elections, and lower still in odd-year elections.
Pennsylvania’s last municipal primary election in 2021 had 22 percent voter turnout.
Officials urged voters to come out this year.
“People need to understand that they’re just as important, if not more, than a presidential or a gubernatorial year because you’re voting for people who live in your township, live in your county,” Salzarulo said. “They directly affect you almost more so than some of the bigger races, so it’s important that they come out and vote.”
Results could come out even faster, officials said, if they were allowed to begin pre-canvassing, or processing mail-in ballots, sooner. Currently, poll workers can’t start pre-canvassing until 7 a.m. on Election Day.
“We’ve learned a lot about how to learn how to work our resources to ensure that we’re getting the timely results that people are anticipating, but it would be great if we had more time to process them ahead of Election Day so we could focus our attention on the in-person election on Election Day instead,” said Lisa Schaefer, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.
Mail-in ballots remain popular; 787,346 Pennsylvania voters requested a mail-in ballot this year, versus 820,900 voters in May 2021.
Of the mail-in ballots requested this year, 452,259 had been returned as of Friday.