Editorial: Election vendor problems demand solutions

The other day, we said that the various hurdles this year’s voting has been experiencing aren’t reasons to give up but challenges to overcome leading toward the 2020 elections.

We stand by that — even though additional problems have cropped up since then.

We already knew Westmoreland County was having issues with its ballots not being mailed out when they were supposed to be by Ohio-based vendor Midwest Direct, which could be receiving up to $170,000 for its contract.

“(The company) has experienced delays due to both increased volume and mechanical issues,” county officials said in a statement.

That may have been an understatement.

On Wednesday, Allegheny County officials said almost 29,000 voters had received the wrong ballots.

How can a ballot be wrong? While some people got ballots that appear to be perfectly fine, other voters — some in the same home — got ballots for the wrong places. Sure, they may seem like they would still work for the presidential race or for Pennsylvania attorney general or auditor general, but would they?

And as much as the big White House showdown gets all the attention, it isn’t the only game in town. Pennsylvanians still have U.S. Congress seats to pick and state House and Senate jobs to fill. A voter from Squirrel Hill can’t do that with a ballot for Tarentum.

This is more than a stumble — especially given that it’s happening in more than one place.

And that isn’t just Allegheny and Westmoreland. It’s happening in Ohio, too.

According to the Akron Beacon Journal, Summit County also is having issues with the 95,000 ballots it contracted with the company to send out. That area has opted to end the contract and pull the work back to do in-house.

Midwest Direct has a track record in the elections business. According to its website, it has churned out more than 5 million ballots to residents in 38 counties and multiple states in 2019 and 2020. There is that issue of increased business and subsequent machine problems.

The company has seen 20 counties in Ohio double or triple the number of ballots it was sending out, just as Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot requests have spiked at the crossroads of the coronavirus pandemic and a hugely contentious presidential election.

These don’t seem like problems that either Allegheny or Westmoreland created, but officials in both counties still have to deal with the fallout.

Maybe Westmoreland voters are seeing their situations resolved. Some are saying their ballots have shown up.

But how will Allegheny officials handle the mistaken ballots sent to their residents? Will they have confidence in the rest of the ballots? Will the voters?

County workers in Ohio are picking up the slack themselves to take back the outsourced job. Is that something that should be considered by local officials before it’s too late?