Pa. primary: Lancaster County printing error affects roughly 22,000 mail-in ballots, officials say

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Printing errors will pressure native election officers in Pennsylvania to redo hundreds of mailed ballots, a laborious course of that would delay outcomes for some intently contested races in Tuesday’s primaries.

In Pennsylvania, the place GOP primaries for governor and U.S. Senate are drawing nationwide consideration, officers in Republican-leaning Lancaster County stated the corporate that printed its mailed ballots included the improper ID code, stopping scanning machines from with the ability to learn them. The issue concerned at the least 21,000 mailed ballots, solely a 3rd of which have been scanning correctly.

The glitch will pressure election employees to hand-mark recent ballots, a course of anticipated to take a number of days. Officers within the county, the state’s sixth most populous, pledged that each one the ballots will likely be counted finally.

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“Residents need to have correct outcomes from elections and so they need to have them on election night time, not days later,” Josh Parsons, a Republican and vice chair of the county board of commissioners, stated at a information convention. “However due to this, we’re not going to have ultimate election outcomes from these mail ballots for most likely a number of days, in order that could be very, very irritating to us.”

The Pennsylvania Secretary of State’s workplace launched this assertion to ABC Information:

“About 22,000 mail ballots have been printed by the print vendor with the wrong code and couldn’t be learn by the county’s scanners. County election officers will re-mark the ballots by hand after which scan them. That is allowed beneath PA regulation. It’s prone to take county officers a number of days.”

In Berks County, Pennsylvania, a choose dominated Tuesday that each one polling locations would stay open an hour later, till 9 p.m. Jap, after a number of places skilled technical points with digital pollbooks which can be used to test in voters.

Voters who arrived at polling locations after 8 p.m. needed to solid provisional ballots quite than utilizing voting machines.

SEE ALSO: Berks County polls keep open late after reported points with digital ballot books