If absentee voting is an indication, Luzerne County turnout will be higher than expected Nov. 6, county Election Director Marisa Crispell said Tuesday.
Her office has issued 4,155 absentee ballots to date, compared to a final 2,430 in the last mid-term general election in 2014.
The number of absentee requests will grow because voters have until 5 p.m. Oct. 30 to submit their applications to the election office, she said. Completed ballots must be returned by 5 p.m. Nov. 2.
Crispell said current requests for absentees already have surpassed the number in the 2016 presidential primary, which was 2,970. In that year’s general, 7,511 absentee ballots were issued.
In this year’s primary, the county issued 1,098 absentee ballots.
The county’s voter turnout was 39 percent in the 2014 mid-term general, a decrease from 51 percent in 2010 and 50 percent in 2006. Crispell noted that the 2010 turnout may have been higher due to the vote on whether to switch to a county home rule structure, which passed.
Several election overseer colleagues in other counties also are reporting an unexpected influx in absentee voting requests, she said.
“This is a higher response than a typical mid-term, which is a good thing,” said Crispell.
While she is confident the county has enough ballots and envelopes on hand, the printing company informed her several other counties have been forced to order more.
A team of county election staffers has been processing the latest batches of applications daily, striving to get the ballots mailed the same or next day, Crispell said.
Voters can request absentee ballots if they are unable to appear at the polls on Election Day due to an illness, travel, work or other obligation.
Absentee voters are permitted to fill out ballots at the county election office if they are leaving the area soon and do not expect to return in time to get a mailed ballot back to the office before Nov. 2, she said.
However, Crispell stressed this option is supposed to be reserved for voters who are cutting it close, in part because processing in-person requests takes staffers away from addressing the steady stream of new mailed requests.
On-the-spot ballots to absentee voters should not be issued if the voters will be in the area long enough to receive and return a ballot by mail before the deadline.
“We completely understand if someone is leaving in two days. We’ll get them a ballot. But some people seeking ballots in our office are not leaving until the day before the election,” Crispell said. “Pennsylvania is not an early voting state.”
The office is on the second floor of the county’s Penn Place Building at the corner of Market Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Wilkes-Barre.
In response to inquiries, she also noted that mailed applications are not sorted before they are divvied up for processing, which means spouses may receive their absentee ballots in the mail on different days.
Voter stats
Two days after the Oct. 9 deadline to register to vote in the general, Crispell had released preliminary figures showing the county had picked up 1,106 more voters since the May primary, for a new total count of 206,624.
Compared to the primary, the Democrats had lost 349 voters, while Republicans picked up 865 and voters with other affiliations or no affiliation increased by 590.
While Democrats retained their longtime lead, the registration gap between that party and Republicans had declined from 31,422 in May to 30,208, the initial figures showed.
Crispell said Tuesday she has updated figures based on the processing of more applications that had to be accepted because they were postmarked Oct. 9.
These additions have now boosted the overall registration count to 207,516, which means 1,998 have signed up to vote since the primary.
The net effect of the updated changes since May:
• Democrats lost 57, bringing their new count to 106,266
• Republicans gained 1,332, for a new total of 76,233
• Unaffiliated or other voters increased 723, with a new total of 25,017
• The gap between Democrats and Republicans is now 30,033.
Unlike primaries, voters are free to select candidates of any party affiliation in the general.
