HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Two Pennsylvania counties had to replace poll books at all polling places during in-person voting during Tuesday’s election, after officials said they made mistakes when creating voter data.
Local elections and the affected voters who decide whether to donate three democratic judges Provisional ballots were offered as a temporary solution for another term on the state Supreme Court. Officials said no race was affected and few voters left the polling place without voting.
Chester County, the state’s seventh most populous county in southeastern Pennsylvania and part of the Philadelphia suburbs, was ordered by a judge to extend provisional voting by two hours from its usual closing time of 8 p.m. ET.
Secretary of State Al Schmidt said Tuesday night that Chester County appears to have used voter data in its printed poll book that included only voters registered with the two major parties, as it did in the primary election.
The poll book contains a list of registered voters and their addresses, and is used by election officials at each polling place to determine who can vote there and to verify who has voted.
By midafternoon, the state and county had provided supplemental polling registers of about 75,000 third-party and independent voters who were missing from the original script, Schmidt said. The county said there will be a formal investigation into what happened.
The Department of State was found to have incorrectly provided electronic voter data from the 2024 voter file across Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania, officials announced. The State Department did not respond Wednesday to questions about how the mistake happened.
In some cases, voters arrived at their polling places only to find that they had already voted in their county’s electronic poll book.
County elections director Marybeth Kuznik said election workers were instructed to switch to a backup paper poll book that the county created with accurate voter data.
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