EASTON, Pa. — Northampton County election officials planned to start sorting through nearly 4,000 provisional ballots Tuesday, more than double the amount recorded in the 2020 presidential election.
As of 3 p.m., 16 canvassers were waiting at the Northampton County Courthouse to begin combing through the 3,925 provisional ballots cast at polling places on Election Day.
Provisional ballots are cast when there is some question over a voter’s eligibility such as whether they’re registered or if they’re supposed to be voting by mail.
The provisional ballot count is unusually large; 1,839 provisional ballots were tallied in the 2020 presidential race.
While races are typically called hours after polls closed, it’s always taken weeks for counties to finalize the official outcomes.
...A significant portion of Northampton County’s provisional ballots came from Bethlehem’s Third Ward and Easton’s Third Ward, Third Precinct.Christopher Commini, Northampton County Registrar
Along with tallying hundreds or thousands of provisional ballots, staff sort through military and overseas ballots that have a later due date. The Northampton County Elections Commission has scheduled a meeting Tuesday, Nov. 19, to certify its results.
Most years, no races are close enough to hang on the relatively small number of provisional ballots.
This cycle, the only race still pending is Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race. While Republican Dave McCormick has declared victory, Democratic incumbent Bob Casey is hoping that an unusually large batch of provisional ballots statewide could lift him to a razor-thin victory.
Northampton County Registrar Christopher Commini said Tuesday that a significant portion of Northampton County’s provisional ballots came from Bethlehem’s Third Ward and Easton’s Third Ward, Third Precinct. The polling places are where students from Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, and Lafayette College, in Easton, vote.
Matt Munsey, chair of the Northampton County Democratic Committee, said both colleges saw organized voter registration campaigns on their campuses. The applications from those campaigns were filed shortly before the state deadline — in time for them to be eligible to vote, but too late for all of them to be uploaded onto electronic poll books.
Commini said he could not speculate as to why those two precincts saw higher provisional ballot totals compared to other precincts.
In addition to the provisional ballots, county officials said they underestimated the expected turnout at the colleges’ polling places.
The high number of provisional ballots likely contributed to the six-hour wait many voters experienced at the Banana Factory, the polling place for Bethlehem’s Third Ward. Diverting voters from the normal voting process to a provisional ballot can be time consuming, so an unusually large load could have added to delays.
In addition to the provisional ballots, county officials said they underestimated the expected turnout at the colleges’ polling places. Staff used turnout from the 2020 election when deciding where to send machines and staff; neither college had many students on campus that year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Banana Factory was plagued by other issues as well. A voting machine failed to turn on at the start of the day, and voting was paused when medical personnel needed to assist a voter inside the facility.
In related news, Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta said election officials have not alerted his office to any widespread suspicious voter registration applications.
Law enforcement officials in Lancaster, Lehigh and York counties are investigating hundreds or even thousands of problematic voter registration applications that were flagged during the normal vetting process.
