PENNSYLVANIA — Pennsylvania’s 2024 primary election—scheduled for April 23—would conflict with the Jewish holiday of Passover. Three other states had the same issue. Unlike in the other states, which have since rescheduled their primary dates to avoid the conflict, PA legislators find themselves mired in partisanship and are, at press time, still unsuccessful in getting the date changed.

Meanwhile, county election officials statewide are once again waiting on Harrisburg. With a tight schedule ahead of them, local election directors said that—whatever the answer is—they hope it comes sooner than later.

“No matter what day they pick, some group is going to be disenfranchised, but they just need to get the date made,” Wayne County Bureau of Elections Director Cindy Furman said. “We will work with it, whatever we’re told, but the later they make the decision, it just cuts off time for us.”

Nadeen Manzoni, the election director in Pike, echoed the sentiment.

“We always get it done. We do what we have to do. But sometimes the decisions that they make in Harrisburg, [lawmakers] don’t realize the repercussions and the logistics they have in administering elections.”

Holiday conflict, party conflict

In 2024, Passover runs from April 22 to 30. During this time, many observers of the holiday avoid activities like driving, working and using electricity. Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled state Senate advanced legislation to move the primary back to March 19. Not only would it avoid the Passover conflict, it was said at the time, but having an earlier primary could give Pennsylvania a more competitive role in the presidential election.

The Democrat-controlled state House, however, had a competing bill to set the date for April 2. Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, the bill’s primary sponsor, said this would create less of time crunch for candidates and county election offices than the Senate bill.

Earlier this month, the House considered both date options in a dramatic session that devolved into a yelling, singing and partisan “madness,” as House Republican Appropriations Chairman Seth Grove referred to it.

“What we just witnessed here on the floor is proof that [Democrats] are not prepared,” Grove said in a press conference following the session. “You don’t come to the floor [as a majority leader] simply to fail. And yet that is what we watched.”

The March 19 bill’s chances were tanked by the addition of amendments from both parties. An amendment to create stricter voter ID requirements—a GOP priority—was added, as were some last-minute amendments from House Democrats, including ballot curing, pre-canvassing and more flexible mail-in voting requirements.

Now hamstrung with a hodgepodge of sticky amendments, House Republicans and Democrats both largely rejected the bill, which tanked in a 26-177 vote.

Wayne and Pike counties’ own Rep. Joe Adams (PA-139) chastised Democrats for attempting to hastily squeeze in partisan priorities.

“Late Wednesday evening, just before midnight, the Democrat-led House Appropriations Committee adopted a comprehensive, never-before-seen amendment to an election code bill… Hasty election code changes would cause chaos in PA elections,” Adams said in an email to his constituents. “Thankfully, the efforts were unsuccessful. I voted no, as did all Republicans, and many of these terrible new election laws were voted down. Our elections are far too important for substantial changes to be made to legislation under the cover of darkness, near the midnight hour.”

Among the cacophony and controversy, the other bill to change the primary date to April 2 passed the House along parties lines. However, it was deemed “dead on arrival” when it reached the state Senate.

“In the Senate we now consider this matter to be closed,” Sen. Joe Pittman, the Republican majority leader from Indiana County, said in a letter. He said the Senate rejects April 2 because it would be too close to Easter, taking place the prior Sunday. Since many counties use churches as polling places, election workers would need that weekend to get set up, possibly disrupting holiday services. 

For context, Wayne County, a medium-sized county, starts delivering election equipment to polling places nearly a full week before Election Day.

Pittman said it’s up to the House to reconsider the March 19 date, pass it and get it to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s desk for approval. According to spokespeople for Democratic leaders, this is looking unlikely.

Election directors weigh in

There are a lot of moving parts and tight timeframes in an election. The decisions, or lack of decisions, made by state lawmakers directly impact the jobs of election directors like Nadeen Manzoni in Pike County and Furman in Wayne. When these things are being decided so late in the year, it’s even harder on them.

“Typically petition circulation happens 13 weeks out from an election. And after that is when candidates can file objections to nominations, court hearings take place, and until all of that is done and resolved… we can’t start to create our ballots,” Manzoni said. “If they compress the timeframe where things need to happen in the election world, and it puts us into a time crunch where it’s going to effect how quickly we can get our ballots out and in the mail to our mail-in voters, then it’s going to be a problem for our offices.”

Manzoni said there’s also been talk of cutting the petition-circulation from 13 down to 10 weeks before the election.

“It would leave us four weeks to get our ballots together and out in the mail, which would be a nightmare for us,” she said.

One of the issues legislators sparred over most recently, the issue of pre-canvassing, Furman and Manzoni both said would have a “completely positive” impact, especially on larger, more densely populated counties.

Pre-canvassing would allow election offices to process mail-in ballots received prior to election day. Currently in PA, mail-in ballots cannot be opened and counted until the day of an election.

“Pre-canvassing would be a definite benefit for the counties and even for the voters,” Furman said. “If they can let us pre-canvass, even two or three days the week before, we can’t report any vote totals… all our results would be done on Election Day.”