Westmoreland County prepares for high volume of mail-in votes

Westmoreland County will be ready if large numbers of voters decide to stay home on Election Day.

Officials will spend about $100,000 for new equipment to help count mail-in votes in next month’s primary and in the November general election.

County commissioners approved buying two high-speed scanners from Election Systems & Software, the Nebraska company that sold the county the new voting systems, that will be used for the first time in next week’s special election to fill a vacancy in the state House’s 58th District.

The county will pay $94,275 for the scanners and an additional $10,200 in maintenance agreements for the next decade. Commissioners also spent nearly $4,600 for a high-speed automated letter opener for what officials believe will be a high number of mail-in votes this year.

“We expect that, because of the coronavirus, we could have a lot of people stay home and mail in votes,” said Beth Lechman, director of the county’s elections bureau.

A change last year in state law allows for voters to submit mail-in ballots for any reason.

So far, the county has received more than 2,000 mail-in ballot applications for the April 28 primary. The deadline to submit mail-in ballot applications is April 21. Only absentee ballots can be used for the March 17 special election. The deadline to apply for those has passed.

Commissioners last year paid about $7.1 million to buy new touch-screen voting systems and scanners to meet a state mandate that calls for paper receipts of each ballot cast. Westmoreland County voters, as they have for 15 years, will use touch-screen computers to mark ballots that will be printed at the polls. Voters then insert their ballots into digital scanners.

Lechman said 161 computers and 66 scanners will be used in next week’s special election. Because election laws require those machines to be locked down for 30 days following an election, the county will rent 70 additional scanners for the primary.

Officials said the $84,800 cost to rent scanners will be reimbursed by the state as part of the $200,000 price tag for the special election, Lechman said.