JIM THORPE, Pa. — Official election ballots are showing up in mailboxes across the commonwealth. Carbon County Election Director Lisa Dart is preparing for the first municipal election with universal mail-in voting.
"Normally with the municipal, we may have 250 of just the absentees, now with the mail in this year, we have about 3,000," Dart said.
But Carbon County's 2021 ballots have yet to be printed after officials discovered an error.
"We were just notified that it should've been vote for three for Lehighton Borough Council," Dart said. "It should have been three seats for a four-year term and one seat for a two-year term; we had it as two."
Dart said it was the result of a simple miscommunication. A special election board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday. Dart hopes to start printing ballots the next day.
"All of our envelopes are labeled and ready to go. We're just waiting on ballots," she said.
Election officials want to remind mail-in and absentee voters to read the instructions inside their ballot to make sure that it can be cast properly and processed quickly.
"The signature obviously has to match what we have," Dart said. "We do scan them in, and they were received, and then we have an area where we put them in by district and in alphabetical order to make it easier when we pre-canvas."
If you prefer not to mail your ballot in, you can drop it off in person at your county's elections office.
"We make sure that it's them, the person's ballot that drops it off," Dart said. "We've gone to cars to get ballots for people if they can't walk in."
The Carbon County elections bureau will have extended hours later this month as Election Day nears. The offices will be open until 6 p.m. on Oct. 18-21, Oct. 25-28, and Nov. 1.