ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — Allegheny County voters are expressing frustration over a shortage of paper ballots at various polling locations following Tuesday’s Primary.
“It’s very frustrating and I don’t think it should happen. That’s why I wanted to bring the attention because I don’t think this should happen again,” said Annmarie Sandor, an Allegheny County Voter.
Both Republican and Democrat voters say it happened to them at various locations.
Board of Elections Member Bethany Hallam says it was the number one issue she witnessed traveling to polling places across the area.
“I think at the end of the day that one of the easiest solutions going forward is for us to really reassess how many ballots were given to each precinct, to each polling place to make sure we have extra,” said Hallam.
Voters were forced to either wait for more ballots to be brought in from the headquarters in the city of Pittsburgh or use the express vote machine.
The express vote machine is a touchscreen device at every polling place.
They have them on hand in case voters cannot physically mark the paper device or if they run out of paper ballots.
Because there’s only one machine at each place — wait times increased and some folks decided to leave.
“Even before I signed in — I’m told there’s no Republican ballots. The person ahead of me chose to wait,” said Sandor.
Regardless, Hallam says every vote was counted accurately and they will ensure this doesn’t happen again.
“It’s only been a few years now. A handful of elections that we’ve used these new voting machines with the paper ballots. We’re still trying to figure it out. It’s no an exact science. There’s a lot of decision making that goes into figuring out how many ballots to give to each polling place,” said Hallam.
Channel 11 asked an Allegheny County spokesperson what caused the ballot issues and was told, in part, “Even though we plan for an overage, voter turnout was higher than expected and ballots were being sent out upon request.”
Another issue at hand — there are 31 precincts in Allegheny County where in-person votes have not been counted yet.
Thirty of them did not return the memory sticks from the voting machines.
They are locked in the machines in the polling places.
It will be six days before all of those can be retrieved.
Allegheny County says election results will not change until Friday.
That’s when the Return Board will start reviewing provisional ballots.
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