Decision 2020: Here’s an update on mail-in ballots in Westmoreland County

WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa. — About 2,800 people still haven’t received their ballots yet here in Westmoreland County.

if you’re one of them, county leaders said you can come to the courthouse to get a new one printed and you can drop it off right here in these drop off boxes to ensure your vote is counted.

“I think 99% of the ballots have been mailed out as of now... we all know there’s been mail delays and spotty areas where they had issues,” said Pennsylvania State Secretary Sec. Kathy Boockvar.

The return rate in Westmoreland County is at about 66% right now, just five days before the election.

The director of the election bureau said besides being inundated with phone calls, she’s not really seeing any issues with ballots. But there have been some reports of duplicate ballots or no ballots at all.

“If you do not have your ballot in possession to fill it out, and you’ve been waiting and waiting and called and called, now is the time to come in these last couple days and early next week to drop off and fill it out,” said Westmoreland County commissioner Sean Kertes.

“Your ballot number is on there, you are to send one back and either keep the second ballot or destroy it, if you do send 2 back only 1 ballot will be counted because the numbers match up,” Westmoreland county commissioner Gina Cerilli said.

But there are still about 2800 voters here who haven’t received a ballot at all yet, and Commissioners can’t pinpoint the cause as to why.

“It could be Midwest direct, it could be the transfer between the Pittsburgh company to the post office to the mail carrier coming to your house there’s no definite true answer,” Cerilli said.

Westmoreland County plans on counting upwards of 100,000 mail in ballots starting at 7 a.m. on Election Day, but the county now said the Supreme Court’s 3-day extension to receive ballots will be segregated and may be conditional if there’s any future litigation.

“The state has told us that any ballots that come in at 8:01pm on Election Day have to be kept separately because we won’t know if those ballots are going to count or not,” Cerilli said.

Commissioners said if you still haven’t received or surrendered your ballot by Election Day — you can still go to the polls and vote provisionally.