Fox 43: Pennsylvania counties prepare to send, receive mail-in ballots

James Corrigan of Fox 43 reports on Pennsylvania counties’ preparations for the mail-in ballot process.

Mail-in ballots have yet to be sent out in Pennsylvania, but following the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s certification of the ballot, they are expected to be mailed in the next several weeks.

Counties such as Lebanon County are now preparing to send the ballots by processing applications, while also preparing for the sorting and counting of those ballots when they are mailed back.

“The applications have been coming in since the primary non-stop,” said Sean Drasher, the director of the Lebanon County Board of Elections. “We’re purging out the old records that need to come out of the voter rolls, so that’s people who passed away or moved out of the area. We’re also adding all the new ones that are coming in, and they’re coming in at a very brisk rate right now. So we are currently at just shy of 12,000 mail-in applications for our county.”

Drasher says he expects the county will see a decrease in the approximately 18,000 mail-in ballot applications from 2020, due in large part to there not being a global COVID emergency this year.