Lancaster County, PA Election Results to be Delayed Because of Mail in Ballot Error Caused by Vendor

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania has reported an issue with two-thirds of the mail-in ballots. This error will mean that the count of the mail-in ballots will be delayed by a few extra days.

The ballots would not scan because of incorrect printing of the wrong identification code. The county has placed the blame on the vendor that printed the ballots.

Ballots cannot be opened legally until the day of the election, so there was no way for officials to catch the error ahead of today.

Ballots that are deemed to have an issue will be set aside, election workers will then remark them and scan them. This process is set to begin Wednesday morning and is expected to take three or four days.

The county had a similar issue last year where mail-in ballots would not scan, this led the county to change vendors.

Chief Registrar Christa Miller stated, “Every ballot that we have received will be counted. There will not be a ballot out there that is not counted that is supposed to be. It will take us a few extra days, and we may have to remark it, but we will take care of it. Everybody’s ballot we got will count.”

This error affects both Republican and Democrat primary ballots. There were approximately 22,000 mail-in ballots cast in Lancaster County, two-thirds of those will not scan.

At this time it is unclear what effect this will have on races outside of Lancaster County such as Governor and Lt. Governor.