Harrisburg, Pennsylvania– Two counties in Pennsylvania had to replace poll books at all polling places during in-person voting during Tuesday’s election because of what officials described as errors made in creating voter data.
Affected voters decide local races and whether or not to give Three Democratic justices Another term on the state Supreme Court was offered on provisional ballots as a temporary solution. Officials said no races were affected and that few voters left polling places without voting.
Chester County — the state’s seventh-most populous county and part of the densely populated Philadelphia suburbs in southeastern Pennsylvania — obtained an order from a judge to extend voting by provisional ballot by two hours past the usual closing time of 8 p.m. EST.
Secretary of State Al Schmidt said Tuesday night that Chester County apparently used voter data that contained only voters registered with the two major parties — as in the primary — in printed ballot books.
Poll books contain a list of registered voters’ names and addresses that election officials at each polling place use to determine who can vote there and to verify who has voted.
By mid-afternoon, the state and county had provided supplemental ballot books for about 75,000 third-party and unaffiliated voters who were removed from the original books, Schmidt said. The district said there will be a formal review of what happened.
Across the state, officials discovered in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Fayette County that the State Department had mistakenly provided electronic voter data that was from the 2024 voter file. The State Department did not respond Wednesday to questions about how the error occurred, officials said.
Voters who arrived at polling places found, in some cases, that county electronic poll books listed them as having already cast a ballot.
Election workers have been instructed to switch to backup paper ballot books created by the county that contain accurate voter data, said Marybeth Kuznick, the county’s director of elections.
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