All the roadblocks thrown at Butler County officials in the 2020 primary election season weren't enough to stymie the democratic process.

The election marched on Tuesday, and candidates were chosen for November's general election.

Bureau of Elections workers were extra busy these past few weeks in the midst of a global pandemic scheduling poll workers, setting up polling sites for social distancing, and plowing through mountains of mail-in, absentee and military ballots that had to first be sent out and then counted upon return.

County Commissioner Chairwoman Leslie Osche praised the dedication of the county's hundreds of poll workers, clerks and judges of elections, most of whom braved the waning pandemic to arrive at their posts as usual.

All things considered, Osche thinks Butler County pushed through and experienced a challenging but successful primary election.

“Seeing the nightmares from other places, we fared pretty well,” she said.

Election officials were tallying votes until early Wednesday. In addition to the 26,143 ballots cast at the polls, another 19,510 mail-in and absentee ballots were tallied.

But military, provisional and write-in ballots were not included in election results released by the county early Wednesday.

Additionally about 150 ballots could not be read by scanning machines and need to be re-created by hand.

The coronavirus pandemic, the exit of the elections bureau director in April, the first year Pennsylvanians could request mail-in ballots, and a presidential election all created an extremely challenging primary in not only Butler County, but across the state.

Despite the challenges, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar praised elections officials across the commonwealth for the primary running remarkably smooth during a Tuesday night press conference.

“Today, we marked two major milestones in Pennsylvania's electoral history,” Boockvar said. “For the first time, Pennsylvania voters could vote by mail-in ballot without having to provide an excuse, and they did so in impressive numbers. And all 67 counties have now deployed new, more secure and accessible voting systems with voter-verifiable paper ballots.”

Approximately 1.8 million Pennsylvania voters applied for and were approved to vote by mail-in and absentee ballots, which is 17 times greater than the number who applied for an absentee ballot for the last presidential primary in 2016.

Mail-in ballot challenge

One major challenge at the elections bureau has been the thousands of mail-in ballots both requested and returned.

Wil White, county solicitor and overseer of the elections bureau for the primary, said as of Friday morning, 24,795 mail-in, military and absentee ballots had been mailed.

As of Tuesday night, more than 19,500 came back.

Osche said the bureau saw a steady stream of voters carrying their ballots into the office before the 8 p.m. Tuesday deadline.

Sheriff's deputies processed voters through the government center's security and scanned them for their temperatures.

“They said everything was fine,” Osche reported. “Everyone just dropped off their ballots and came back.”

Voters who requested mail-in ballots but felt their envelopes might not make it to the elections bureau if they dropped them in the mail in the days before the election brought their ballots to the county government center, showed their photo identification and submitted their votes.

Photo ID issues

Although county officials have been trying to get the word out that photo ID was needed to submit a ballot at the government center, some voters brought not only their ballots, but those of family members.

No ballots were accepted unless the voter could show identification.

Osche said the idea of having a drop box for ballots caused concern given the public unrest in the past few days.

“If you can drop paper in it, then you can drop a cigarette in it,” Osche said, citing further concern the box could be completely removed from its moorings and stolen.

She was confident all ballots hand-delivered to the government center were counted.

Provisional hurdles

Provisional ballots were also a hurdle Tuesday.

Many voters who requested a mail-in ballot but either didn't send it back or were afraid it would not arrive in time to be counted chose to go to their polling place to vote.

Those voters were not denied the right to cast their vote at the polls, but they were given a provisional ballot to choose their candidates.

Osche said some poll workers were stressed out about providing the provisional ballots to so many voters.

The provisional ballots will take some time to count, as elections bureau workers must check the poll books against the mail-in ballots to ensure only one vote is counted.