This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
By Carter Walker, Votebeat
A sweeping bill to overhaul the commonwealth’s election laws has passed the Pennsylvania House. Its changes would include creating in-person early voting, giving counties more time to process mail ballots, and requiring counties to use mail ballot drop boxes.
But it doesn’t include one provision that will likely be important to its prospects: a voter ID requirement, something that Republicans, who control the state Senate, have always seen as crucial to any election law deal.
State House leaders in both parties have lately said they are open to a voter ID requirement after years of partisan fights. The chamber even advanced a standalone bill, sponsored by two swing-district lawmakers, that would create a lenient voter ID requirement for all in-person voters.
However, a top state House Democrat said that bill was pulled from this week’s voting calendar because some Republicans in the chamber weren’t going to vote for it. Given the limited House Democratic support, the proposal would have been short of the 102 votes needed for final passage.
In a statement, House Minority Leader Jesse Topper (R., Bedford) acknowledged that Republicans have “specific concerns with the details” of the voter ID proposal and said talks are ongoing. Spotlight PA and Votebeat previously reported that Republicans typically back stricter voter ID proposals than the one currently before the House.
State Rep. Tom Mehaffie (R., Dauphin), a co-sponsor of the voter ID proposal, told Spotlight PA and Votebeat that he feels “extremely confident this is exactly what voter ID should look like in Pennsylvania because it makes it constitutional.”
He said he hoped that lawmakers could pass the measure sometime when they return to session in June.
However, even if Mehaffie’s bill passes, the proposal would likely meet a frosty reception in the GOP-controlled state Senate.
In a statement, Kate Flessner, spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana), said that the upper chamber has “been consistent and clear that Voter ID should be implemented through the Constitutional Amendment process,” and not as simple legislation, as the House’s bill, if passed, would be.
“The legislation that is sent over from the House will be referred to the appropriate Senate standing committee for review,” Flesser concluded.
The broad election bill, without voter ID, passed the narrowly divided chamber 102 to 101, with no votes from Republicans.
Meanwhile, election officials on the ground are watching Harrisburg’s maneuvers closely, and county and local election officials told Votebeat and Spotlight PA they worry the House’s bill has contradictions that would make implementing some provisions difficult.
Long-sought changes on pre-canvassing and early voting
The House’s omnibus bill, sponsored by Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), includes election law changes that Democrats have sought for years in an effort to improve voter access.
One of the most significant is the introduction of in-person early voting.
Currently, Pennsylvania allows a clunky process similar to early voting in which voters can request a mail ballot in person at their county elections office, fill it out, and cast it on site. Some counties also allow this to happen at satellite election offices. But the process has led to long lines and confused voters.
The bill would create a true early voting process, in which voters would be able to cast their vote ahead of time in the same manner they would on Election Day.
At least one early voting location would be required per county, with an additional location for every 100,000 voters. These locations would be open starting 11 days before the election and until the Sunday before Election Day.
McClinton’s bill also includes several process changes that county election officials have been advocating for since no-excuse mail voting was implemented in 2020.
It would allow counties to start preprocessing mail ballots up to seven days before Election Day. Currently, counties cannot begin to process them until the morning of Election Day.
County officials have repeatedly said that opening mail ballot envelopes and flattening the ballots — a process also known as pre-canvassing — is the most time-consuming part of tallying mail votes, and the inability to start the work before Election Day contributes to delayed results.
The measure also would remove the heavily litigated requirement that voters hand-write the date on the mail ballot return envelope, and would prohibit counties from rejecting mail ballots for being returned without an inner secrecy envelope.
If voters forget to sign the return envelope, counties would be required to notify them within 24 hours and provide them with a form, which could be filled out and returned up to six days after the election, to “cure” the error.
Lack of clarity on ballot curing in the state Election Code has led to a patchwork of policies across the state.
The bill would also require a minimum of two mail-ballot drop boxes in every county. It is currently up to individual counties to decide whether they will use drop boxes, and many don’t.
Counties would also be required to start using electronic poll books, which speed up voter check-in and post-voting checks, in all precincts by 2027.
The measure would authorize the Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority to issue a $60 million bond that could specifically “fund reimbursement of counties for the purchase/lease of e-poll books and election infrastructure equipment,” according to the bill’s fiscal note.
It also directs the General Assembly to appropriate $2 million from the state’s general fund for the Department of State to assess and approve new electronic poll books for use in every county.
Some conflicting provisions cause confusion
The McClinton bill, however, appears to include some internal contradictions.
For instance, the measure allows counties to begin processing mail ballots before Election Day but prohibits workers from actually counting the votes during that period. However, that same restriction on tabulation isn’t in place for votes cast through early voting.
“I am not sure if the pre-canvassing thing is a mistake or not,” said Thad Hall, elections director in Mercer County. “Because if they really don’t want us to scan the ballots before Election Day, and we’re going to have early voting, it is contradictory.”
And while the bill eliminates the date requirement on mail ballots, the form that voters would use to cure other errors asks for them to provide a signature and date, raising questions about whether counties could still reject ballots for lacking a date on the form. That could set the state up for more litigation.
Beth Rementer, a state House spokesperson, said voters should provide a date on the cure form, but it is not required, and a missing or incorrect date would not be considered a defect that would disqualify a ballot.
As to the contradiction between pre-canvassing mail ballots and early-voting ballots, Rementer said tabulation is already not allowed before 8 p.m. election night.
Hall said that is incorrect, and that counties are already tabulating mail ballots before 8 p.m., just not reporting results. The law currently says pre-canvassing, which begins at 7 a.m. on Election Day, includes “the counting, computing and tallying of the votes.”
Hall said he appreciates that someone in legislative leadership is finally trying to address some of the issues facing local election officials, such as the long lines at elections offices due to the state’s lack of true early voting and the inefficiencies caused by the pre-canvassing prohibition.
But along with those possible contradictions, he said the bill is written in a way that doesn’t take into account things that affect medium or smaller counties.
Counties are currently required to locate their elections office in the county seat, and the bill would also require an early voting location in the county seat. Hall said this could be a problem for smaller counties, as their county seats often have limited office space.
Hall’s own county seat, the borough of Mercer, is home to fewer than 2,000 residents.
Delaware County Elections Director Jim Allen is skeptical the bill will pass the Senate in its current form, but said that as talks continue, he and other election officials are hoping the legislature will reach out to them for input.
“We can tell them what is going to be a pitfall, what is going to be problematic, and what items are totally impossible, such as the idea that there is equipment that does not count or tabulate,” he said, referring to the pre-canvassing language.
“I’m not aware of any election officials being consulted on this [legislation], that’s the conversation that has occurred [among us].”
Bradford, the state House majority leader, told Votebeat and Spotlight PA that his chamber’s lawmakers recognize that “perfection is not what we do here.”
“But we need to move forward on these issues,” he said. “We look forward to having more discussions as the process continues on any issues [in the bill].”
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org. Stephen Caruso is the Capitol Reporter for Spotlight PA. Contact Stephen atscaruso@spotlightpa.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
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