Finally: Friday court ruling removes obstacle to preparing ballots, voting machines for April 23 primary
Petition challenge in U.S. Senate race held up preparation in election offices across the state
A state Supreme Court decision Friday finally gave county election officials, including those in the Lehigh Valley, what they wanted to hear: They could resume the final steps to prepare for the April 23 primary.
Lehigh, Northampton and other counties delayed printing and sending out mail ballots as well as programming and testing voting machines while the court considered the request by one candidate seeking reinstatement to the Republican U.S. Senate ballot.
“Everything is on hold,” Tim Benyo, Lehigh County’s chief clerk of elections, said Friday morning, before the court announced its decision.
“We are not moving forward until we get final disposition on whether this candidate is off or on the ballot,” said Brittney Waylen, Northampton County’s deputy director of administration and public information officer.
That word came down late Friday afternoon, when the court rejected the request of Joseph J. Vodvarka, a perennial candidate from Allegheny County who has gone to court before to remain on the ballot.
Benyo and Waylen noted their election offices were at least a week behind schedule with five weeks before the primary.
The court’s decision to keep Vodvarka off the ballot gave Dave McCormick a clear path to the GOP nomination for senator. Sen. Bob Casey, who is unopposed for the Democratic nomination, had a potential challenger, but Will Parker from Pittsburgh lost an appeal to the Supreme Court March 18 to get back on the ballot.
In February, three Republican voters challenged Vodvarka’s nomination petitions and asked Commonwealth Court to remove him from the ballot, noting his petitions lacked the required 2,000 valid signatures.
In their brief filed with the court, they identified a sufficient number of signatures as invalid for various reasons: People were not registered to vote, didn't live at the address they indicated, were not registered as Republicans, signed petitions twice or signatures were illegible.
On March 8, Senior Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt agreed, determining that Vodvarka’s nomination petitions fell about two dozen signatures short of 2,000 and removed him from the ballot. Vodvarka then appealed to the Supreme Court, which affirmed Leavitt’s decision.
At least one county, Washington, didn’t wait for either appeal to play out and prepared ballots that included Vodvarka’s and Parker’s names, according to the Observer-Reporter. The county planned to include a letter with mail-in ballots explaining that the candidates were removed from the ballot and also post signs with that message at the polls.
Northampton and Lehigh officials thought it was prudent to wait for the Supreme Court’s decision.
“While other counties may handle this situation differently, we are not moving forward until we get final disposition on whether this candidate is off or on the ballot,” Waylen said.
“The appeal delayed our ballots at least one week and our [voting machine] testing was delayed two weeks,” she said. “Our hope is that we will be able to move quickly once a decision is made. We have contingencies in place to adjust the testing schedule. We anticipate being able to mail ballots near the end of the month and will hold the majority of the machine testing in early April.”
Benyo, who has been in his job with Lehigh County for 15 years, said delays before the state’s mail-in voting was first used in 2020 “were not as disruptive as they are now. So many more voters are affected by the delays.”
He said it takes time to ramp up operations before the primary.
“It’s not like once a decision is made [by the court] a switch is flipped and the ballots hit the mail system," Benyo said. “The database needs to be updated, proofed, created, media programmed, media tested, ballots tested and then the green light goes to the printer to print and assemble packets to be introduced to the mail stream.”