Voting Briefing
Editor’s note: This short follow-up to earlier articles about voting is not comprehensive.
November 3 is Election Day! Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
If you don’t want to vote in person, you can still submit your mail-in ballot, either in a voting drop box or your local post office. Ballots postmarked by November 3 and received by November 6 will be counted — unless the U.S. Supreme Court rules otherwise. (See “Pennsylvania in the Crosshairs,” p. 4.)
If you received a mail-in ballot, but want to vote in person instead, you can. You must bring your ballot and everything that came with it — the return-mail envelope and the inner blank “security envelope” — to your polling place. A poll worker will help you void them. Then you may vote in person.
New Procedures for Voting In Person
New voting procedures are in place for this election. Susan Smythe, the judge of elections in Swarthmore’s western precinct, wants people to know what to expect.
“Everyone marks a paper ballot at a booth,” she reports. No more touch-screen machines. (This change was in effect for the primary elections earlier this year.) Then voters will take the ballot to a scanner and run it through. (This is different from the primary election procedure.) “The scanner detects any errors,” Smythe explains. “Unclear markings, missed offices, etc. And you have a chance to correct and rescan, or send it through as is. Ballots then go into a locked drop box to be returned to the county office.”
The scanner counts the votes, but the paper ballots in the box can be used if a hand recount is needed.
Health-protective measures, like plexiglass barriers between voters and poll workers at the sign-in table, will be in place. Poll workers will provide each voter with a single-use, disposable pen, or voters may bring and use their own (blue or black) pens to mark their ballots.
There is no mechanism, as there was in the past, to vote a straight party-line ticket. Voters must vote for each candidate separately.
Resources
The Delaware County election phone hotline is open Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. – 8 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. – noon: 610-891-VOTE. By calling this number, you can obtain information from trained staff about voter registration, mail-in ballots, vote-by-mail applications, polling place locations, ballot boxes, deadlines, and more.
