How Pennsylvanians vote by mail can either increase or ease burdens on election officials.
Requesting the ballot online rather than on paper, asking for a mail ballot as early as possible, and returning it with as much time to spare all help lighten the load for elections officials.
Since Pennsylvania doesn’t have early voting, thousands of Pennsylvanians are opting for a work-around that has come to be called “on demand” or “over the counter” by mail voting.
Chris Spackman runs elections in Dauphin County. He says everyone is welcome to use this method, and some people may need it more than others.
“One of the better applications of this is if you just heard you need to be out of town [on Election Day],” Spackman said.
If a would-be voter is concerned that they don’t have enough time to receive a mail-in ballot before leaving town, going into the office, asking for a mail-in ballot, and returning it on the spot is the easy fix, Spackman said.
But the process has its costs, too.
When voters submit mail-in ballot requests online or even by mail, election officials can process those in batches, anywhere from several thousand when ballots are first sent out to dozens each day after. As of Wednesday morning, more than 1.2 million Pennsylvanians requested mail-in ballots for the midterms and over half have returned their ballots, per state data.
When voters come into an elections office and ask for a ballot in-person, that must be dealt with one-by-one. Counties have worked with the Department of State to streamline the process as much as is possible under Pennsylvania law, but it remains far more time consuming per voter than voting on election day or even compared to real early voting systems in other states.
York County’s president commissioner, Julie Wheeler, said serving voters one by one on an as-they-come basis takes staff away from all the other tasks that need to get accomplished during the day.
Pennsylvania Department of State’s deputy secretary for elections, Jonathan Marks, said the system is not a replacement for real early voting processes.
“It is the most inefficient and painful way of early voting imaginable,” Marks said.
In 2024, voters in some counties had several-hour waits after then-candidate Donald Trump encouraged people to use the “early voting” method, and the demand put additional pressure on elections offices that are not set up to act as polling places. That year, Dauphin County had voters lined up out the door and down the ramp in front of its elections office.
If voters are worried about returning their mail-in ballots on time, they can deliver the ballots to their county’s elections office during working hours or to a county drop box, if available. Ballots must be returned by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3.
Voters can also opt to vote in-person on Election Day rather than return a mail-in ballot. That also creates some more administrative steps for election officials, but bringing in and surrendering the mail-in ballot and return envelope makes the process easier. Without surrendering the by mail ballot, voters will have to vote provisionally on Election Day to ensure there is no double voting.
Oct. 27 is the last day to request a mail-in ballot. Election officials strongly encourage people to act sooner, as waiting until the deadline means there are only seven days to process the request, mail the ballot, vote the ballot, and return the ballot. At that point, if there’s an issue with the ballot, such as forgetting to put it in the secrecy envelope, there is likely not enough time to fix the problem.