Thousands of Allegheny County voters receiving corrected ballots with orange stripe on envelope

ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — New ballots are going out to 29,000 voters in Allegheny County who originally received an incorrect ballot.

They don’t look like the mail-in ballots many of us have already received.

“It’s going to look a little different. You may have already voted and submitted your mail-in ballot,” said Allegheny County councilperson Bethany Hallam.

On the new ballots, there is an orange bar across the official ballot envelope and on the return envelope inside. Whatever you do, don’t toss it in the trash.

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“What it means is you are one of the almost 29,000 voters in Allegheny County who got the wrong ballot,” Hallam said.

Abby Miser is one of those voters.

“I was pretty surprised. You hear about those mistakes happening, but I didn’t think it would happen to me,” Miser said.

Thousands of the incorrect ballots actually have the wrong races on the ticket.

Miser wants voters to take the orange stripe seriously, because election outcomes depend on it.

“Just to make people aware and say it’s OK, and please still vote,” Miser said.

Election officials said if you vote down the party line, you might not even be aware that you are one of the 29,000.

“There are lots of people who didn’t know they got the wrong ballot until they got the corrected one,” Miser said.

The Allegheny County Elections Office is swamped. More than 391,000 mail-in ballot applications have been approved, and close to 234,000 have been returned.

Elections officials fear due to this volume, some people who applied for a mail-in ballot might not get one in time for Election Day.

Oct. 27 is the deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot.

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Cox Media Group