If you were planning to drop off your ballot at the Westmoreland County Courthouse for the general election this year, you are going to have to switch things up.

The three-member elections board has rejected the idea of placing a drop box for mail-in ballots in the courthouse lobby.

The board is bipartisan. While generally made up of the three county commissioners — split by election into two members of the majority party and one of the minority — this year the commissioners are all on the ballot, making serving as the election board a conflict of interest.

Instead, the board is made up of three Common Pleas judges: Republicans Tim Krieger and Justin Walsh and Democrat Michael Stewart.

The single drop box for a short period of time located in the county courthouse was used in the primary in May. Of approximately 24,000 mail-in ballots cast in the primary, 488 were placed in the drop box.

The numbers may indicate that the drop box was not strictly necessary this year, with just 2% of the total mail-in users utilizing it. That makes the board’s decision understandable.

Except that it wasn’t a decision.

Krieger and Walsh did not vote against the proposal. They declined to hold a vote.

Formally hearing the proposal and saying yes or no is not difficult or time-consuming. What it does is let voters know how the process was followed and how the people in charge handled their responsibilities. It places an official stamp of approval or disapproval on the idea. That should be important for any action taken by the government.

But in this instance, the question is about casting votes. It is about how those votes are collected. The very least the people should have expected from the board deciding how the people will vote is an actual vote on the topic.

Editor’s note: A previous version misidentified which judge replaced which commissioner on the election board. It has been simplified for clarity.

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