Dog With A Blog

Between 10,000 and 20,000 voters in Erie County, Pennsylvania still haven’t received their mail-in ballots, according to a new lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, says that 40,844 mail-in ballot applications were approved in Erie County but, as of Oct. 28, only 21,536 ballots have been returned — a return rate of 52%, which is 15 percentage points under the state’s average return rate of 67%. Because of this, the plaintiffs alleged that up to 20,000 mail-in ballots requested by Erie County voters were never delivered.

The lawsuit also alleges that more than 300 voters received two mail-in ballots, one of which may not correlate to the local races those voters are eligible to vote for. The plaintiffs also allege that the United States Postal Service has no record of having received 1,800 mail-in ballots from the third-party vendor that the Erie Board of Elections contracted to distribute mail-in ballots.

The lawsuit says the vendor is still “in the process of trying to locate” the lost ballots. Under state law, mail-in ballots are required to be delivered to voters who requested them at least two weeks prior to the election.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to force the Board of Elections to fix the error by releasing the names of all the voters who might have been affected, to allow those voters to cancel their mail-in ballot status and cast a provisional ballot at an in-person polling place.