Tell the PA General Assembly: Ballots Postmarked by Election Day Should Be Counted in the November Election

From Pennsylvania Common Cause: (https://www.commoncause.org/pennsylvania/):

Pennsylvanians across the state, especially Black and Latinx voters, faced barriers to the ballot box during our primary election — but Election Day might have been even more difficult had a vote-by-mail option not been available to every registered voter.

The system wasn’t perfect, though — because this was the first time Pennsylvania has ever offered vote-by-mail on this scale, counties struggled with a backlog of mail-in ballot requests. Even with fewer Pennsylvanians voting-by-mail than we can expect in November, we saw serious problems with thousands of ballots returned to county elections offices after the deadline.

While Governor Wolf’s executive order made it possible for vote-by-mail ballots to be counted in six counties, as long as they were postmarked by Primary Election Day, there were still voters outside of those counties whose ballots couldn’t be counted because they arrived after the deadline. We can’t rely on the same last-minute fixes for November.

Go to https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-the-legislature-count-ballots-postmarked-by-election-day to tell the Pennsylvania Legislature: Ballots postmarked by Election Day should be counted in the November election.

These problems don’t have to happen again in November — especially if we change our ballot deadline. These changes will give voters more time to return their mail-in ballots and ensure that every vote gets counted.

Our legislature needs to make clear that voters across the state will not be disenfranchised by mail delays and capacity issues in their county elections offices.

TAKE ACTION: Ballots postmarked by Election Day should be counted up until seven days after the election.

It is difficult enough for county boards of elections to keep up with the final rush of mail-in ballot requests — and it is only made more difficult by the challenges facing the U.S. Postal Service.

With additional waves of COVID-19 predicted in Pennsylvania and across the country, we need to be prepared for any possible election scenario — and we need safeguards in place now to make sure that voters don’t have to choose between their health and their vote. Are you with us?