PENNSYLVANIA — There’s a month to go before voters can go to the polls in person— but the civically inclined in Wayne and Pike counties aren’t waiting. 

Last week, mail-in ballots began to be distributed in both counties, going out to the thousands of voters who’d requested them. 

“They’re ready now,” said Wayne County Bureau of Elections director, Amy Christopher. She said the bureau began mailing out ballots on Monday, September 30. 

The bureau has processed around 6,500 requests for mail-in ballots so far, and “they just keep coming in every day,” said Christopher. She said around 9,000 people voted by mail in the 2020 presidential elections. 

Down in Pike County, elections office head Nadeen Manzoni said ballots were “being dropped into the mail stream” starting Friday, October 4. 

Manzoni said the office will be mailing out around 10,000 mail-in ballots, enough for around a quarter of the electorate. These numbers are in line with trends from the previous presidential race, she said. 

National media had previously reported September 16 as the start-date for “early voting” in Pennsylvania. While elections bureaus in Pennsylvania were required to start processing applications for mail-in ballots on that date, the ballots themselves weren’t ready at that time. 

Dot your i’s, cross your t’s

Shifting tides at the state level could have changed how county elections bureaus processed mail-in ballots—but as the sands have settled, little appears to have changed. 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court voted on September 16 to overturn a decision from the Commonwealth Court, which would have compelled elections offices to count mail-in ballots even if they were undated or incorrectly dated. 

The decision leaves things at status quo for Wayne and Pike counties, as bureaus of elections in both counties already had a policy to reject mis-dated ballots. 

Christopher said if the Commonwealth Court’s decision had taken effect, that would have changed the way Wayne County did things. As things stand, the bureau is to make sure that ballots are correctly dated, which is the way the office always did it, she said. 

Pike County won’t count mail-in ballots which aren’t correctly dated, Manzoni said: “That’s the guidance for the state and that’s the law.”

Dates and deadlines

The last day to register or make any changes to voter registration in Pennsylvania is Monday, October 21. 

The last day to apply for a mail-in ballot is Tuesday, October 29. 

Christopher emphasized that voters need to submit their mail-in ballots in time for the ballots to arrive at the bureau of elections by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, November 5. 

“Postmarks don’t count,” she said; the ballots need to be physically at the office by 8 p.m.