Putting mail-in voting concerns to rest

To the Community:

The League of Women Voters of Delaware County wants every registered voter to have an opportunity to vote, but also to assure voters that no one will be able to vote twice.

There are safeguards throughout the system to prevent any would-be cheaters from voting twice or flooding the polls with fake ballots. In Pennsylvania, we now have paper ballots at the polls: These create a tamper-proof paper trail, ensuring that no one can vote more than once. Both mail-in ballots and paper ballots at the polls have barcodes that prevent a person from voting more than once. Duplicate ballots will automatically be rejected by the high-speed counting machines. 

If you have already received a mail-in ballot, but have decided to vote in person instead (perhaps because you are worried that the mail-in ballot won’t get back to the election bureau in time), you may turn in that ballot when you arrive at your polling place (be sure to bring both envelopes it came with).The poll workers will void your mail-in ballot (have it “spoiled”), and you can then sign the poll book and vote normally. Your spoiled ballot will not be able to be read by the scanner or counting machine.

If you applied for a mail-in or absentee ballot, but have not received it by election day, you can still vote by going to your polling place and voting by “provisional ballot.” Provisional ballots get counted about a week later, once the election bureau has verified that it did not already receive a mail-in ballot from you. You will be able to track whether your provisional ballot has been counted by going to VotesPA.com, a Pennsylvania Department of State website.

The point is, every registered voter will have an opportunity to vote, whether by mail or at the polls. 

Note: If you vote by mail, you can track whether your ballot has been counted by going to VotesPA.com. Please DO NOT go to your polling place on election day and ask them to verify whether your mail-in ballot has been counted. Poll workers cannot tell you, and you will only slow down the voting process for your neighbors.

There has never been massive, organized voter fraud involving mail-in ballots in any state, even though some states have had vote-by-mail for decades. Almost every instance of voter fraud has involved the door-to-door “harvesting” of absentee ballots or the manipulation of voting machines by poll workers. Harvesting ballots is illegal. Please do not permit a party official to help you fill out and deliver your ballot. You cannot take your neighbors’ ballots to the election bureau for them. You can only take your own — and your spouse’s if he or she is disabled. (Nursing home staff are authorized, under certain circumstances, to help patients vote and to deliver their ballots for them.) 

If you intend to vote by mail, apply for a mail-in ballot as soon as possible. If you have computer access, you can do this at www.votespa.com.

Olivia Thorne 
Wallingford
The League of Women Voters of Delaware County