Pennsylvania’s early-voting option is a mess, but very popular

A cumbersome pre-election voting option in the largest battleground state caused frustration, long lines and claims of voter suppression earlier this week.

A cumbersome pre-election voting option in the largest battleground state caused frustration, long lines and claims of voter suppression earlier this week. As former President Donald Trump and his proxies urged voters to cast their ballots early this election – an abrupt change from years of Republican attacks on early and mail-in voting across the country – several county offices in Pennsylvania faced a flood of people wanting to use the state’s “on-demand mail ballot voting” process. In Bucks County, just outside of Philadelphia, voters waited several hours to apply for and submit their mail-in ballot on Tuesday, the last day for in-person early voting in the state, until a lawsuit filed by Trump’s campaign successfully extended the deadline. The court case in Bucks County comes after a flurry of other lawsuits about mail-in ballots in the state challenging issues such as handwritten date requirements and whether to count provisional votes cast in-person by those who had their mail-in ballot rejected for technical reasons. The latter issue is before the US Supreme Court on emergency appeal. Legal challenges to voting processes in the Keystone State are fueled in part by the lack of a single election authority in the state and compounded by a politically split state government which has been unable to iron out logistics in its relatively new – but popular – on-demand mail ballot voting procedure ahead of November 5. In the previous presidential election, more than 3 million Pennsylvanians requested mail-in ballots and 85% – just over 2.6 million – voted by mail. To date, more than 2 million people have requested mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and so far, 71% – over 1.5 million – have returned them.