Reforming elections by allowing counties to precanvass mail-in and absentee ballots, and moving the mail-in ballot application deadline to 15 days before the election, is the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania's top legislative priority this year.

The association placed election reform at the summit of its top five list of the priorities the organization intends to address with Gov. Tom Wolf and the General Assembly, and outlined those priorities in a Zoom meeting on Tuesday that was presided over by Butler County Commissioner Kevin Boozel, association president.

Act 77 of 2019 allowed voters to apply for a mail-in ballot up to seven days before an election. It led to some voters not receiving their ballots before the deadline to submit them at 8 p.m. on Election Day or receiving them too close to the deadline for ballots to be returned by mail by 8 p.m. on election night, according to the association.

Uncertainty about whether the counties would receive their mail-in ballots in time led many voters to go to their polling place and vote in person or by provisional ballot.

With postal delays and public health concerns, moving the deadline to 15 days before an election (to coincide with the voter registration deadline) will benefit voters by providing more time for the ballot to get from the county to the voter and back again through the mail, according to the association.

At the same time, counties will have more time to assure poll books are as current as possible with those voters who have applied for and submitted mail-in ballots, creating more efficient polling place operations and preventing unnecessary crowds as counties continue to implement COVID-19 risk management strategies, according to the association.

Prior to Act 77, absentee ballots were provided to each voter's precinct on Election Day to be counted and added to that precinct's vote counts once the polls closed at 8 p.m. The small number of absentee ballots made this process reasonable and did not cause any appreciable delay in tabulating results.

However, Act 77 moved the processing and counting of these ballots from the precincts to the county board of elections because of the expected increase in mail-in ballots.

The Election Code permitted the canvassing of absentee and mail-in ballots beginning at 8 p.m. election night, but counties raised concerns that they would not be able to complete the canvass in a timely fashion if they could not begin the process until after polls closed. In response, amendments to the Election Code in Act 12 of 2020 permitted counties to begin a precanvass period as early as 7 a.m. on Election Day.

Those additional hours were helpful to some counties, but for most it meant essentially conducting two elections — both an in-person election and a mail-in election — on the same day, with the same resources. Even with the extra time, it took several days in most counties to fully process all of the mail-in ballots.

When he was contacted after the meeting, Boozel said precanvassing and moving the mail-in ballot application deadline from seven days before Election Day back to 15 days are vital for helping county election departments run elections efficiently.

He said the county election bureau was running polling places and counting ballots in its office at the same time.

“We need that time just to get started and get that process under way so we're not under the gun,” Boozel said.

Opening ballots, sorting them and putting them into the polling machine consumed a lot of time for election bureau staff, he said.

Boozel said he believes the county vote count was accurate, but the time it took to complete created doubts among voters.

“We're rebuilding trust by working with the Legislature to put in reforms,” he said. “It shouldn't be hard to vote. People should be able to vote without barriers.”

More priorities

Broadband service expansion is the association's second priority.

“Communities cannot continue to wait for infrastructure that is critical to our economic vitality and our personal quality of life,” said Rob Postal, Mifflin County commissioner and chairman of CCAP's community and economic development committee. “The commonwealth must develop partnerships among federal, state and local government, as well as the private sector, that can help to deploy the resources and data needed to make meaningful progress on broadband expansion.”

The third legislative priority is to help create solutions to the emergency medical services crisis.

“Many communities wrestle with a decline, and sometimes even an outright lack of, EMS, because of challenges such as retention and recruitment, training requirements, funding issues, and technology support,” said Mark Hamilton, a Tioga County commissioner who leads CCAP's emergency medical services task force with Boozel.

Human services

The fourth legislative priority is protecting funding for human services that protect the most vulnerable citizens, including abused children, people fighting substance addition, people with mental illness and developmental disabilities, and seniors in need of long-term care.

“Counties deliver these critical services to meet the needs of our communities, but we also face the reality of ever-stagnant funding to support those needs,” said George Hartwick, a Dauphin County commissioner and chairman of CCAP's human services committee. “Each year, we find ourselves working to prevent cuts in state funding for human services, much less achieving the increases that are so critically needed just to catch up from years of underfunding.”

The fifth priority is increasing funding for community-based mental health services, such as prevention, crisis intervention, treatment, community residential programs, family-based support and outpatient care.

“The unique set of stressors caused by the pandemic will certainly impact the already-strained web of human services that makes up the fabric of our community safety net,” said Daryl Miller, a Bradford County commissioner and CCAP first vice president.

The association said there is a recurring threat to eliminate the successful Behavioral HealthChoices program, which allows people to have choices among service providers.

“Close collaboration between the legislature, administration and counties is critical to addressing the mental health system as a whole,” Miller said. “This includes increasing mental health-based funds for expanded services, as well as abandoning efforts to dismantle Behavioral HealthChoices.”