JEFFERSON CO., Pa. (EYT) – With several key county elected seats up for grabs, officials are hoping for a good turnout among voters in Jefferson County today.
(Photo from previous election by Dave Cyphert of ProPoint Media Photography)
So-called “off-year” elections traditionally see a low turnout — often with less than 20% of registered voters casting a vote — but local officials are hoping today’s election turnout may be a bit better, at least in some parts of the county.
However, with the positions of Sheriff and Treasurer both being contested this year, officials in Jefferson County may be seeing a higher turnout than usual.
“We do have a couple of races that people are watching pretty tightly, for the Treasurer and the District Attorney. Typically, we don’t have challengers for those, so that might bring more people out and get them motivated to vote,” Jefferson County Director of Elections Karen Lupone told exploreJeffersonPA.com.
However, Lupone noted this hasn’t played out so far in terms of mail-in numbers, which were down this year. As of Monday morning, Jefferson County had sent out 1,668 mail-in and absentee ballots and had received 1,344 of them back.
“That first year we had such an abundance of mail-in ballots, over 4,000 of them, so it was a whole process, but last spring we had fewer, and everything went smoothly,” Lupone noted.
She said officials will start counting the mail-in ballots at 7 a.m., sorting them into batches to scan, and they expect to get through all of the ones they’ve received so far before lunchtime.
“It goes pretty smooth. We have a group that opens the outer envelope, then a second group that opens the secrecy envelope, so nobody knows who’s ballot came in which outer envelope. Then other sorters go through and sort by municipality and into batches.”
With their process all set, Lupone said they don’t expect any issues with tallying all of the votes, though there may be some write-in campaigns that will be fully tallied at a later date.
While neighboring Clarion County has no contested countywide elections, with the candidates for Treasurer, Sheriff, and Coroner running unopposed, there are contested elections in several municipalities and school boards.
“Turnout should be pretty good,” Clarion County Director of Elections Cindy Callihan said.
“Nothing like we saw in the presidential election, but I think we’ll see more interest than in some past municipal elections.”
Callihan said that the availability of mail-in voting has made a difference, making it easier for some voters to cast their ballot. However, she also noted it often depends on the contested races.
“There seems to be a lot of interest in some of the local races this year, which is a good thing.”
Even with that interest, it still doesn’t generate the kind of response that a presidential election year gets, though. According to Callihan, Clarion County sent out a total of 1,772 mail-in and absentee ballots and had received 1,459 back as of the end of the day on Monday.
“With fewer ballots than we had for the presidential election and a little more experience under our belts now, counting the mail-in votes will be a little smoother now,” Callihan said.
Officials in Clarion County won’t start scanning in the mail-in ballots until the poll books from the polling locations are returned at the end of voting on Tuesday evening.
“We do that to Mae sure people don’t vote at the polls before we scan their mail-in ballot. Then we start right away on election night, but we never finish that night.”
Callihan said they should have all the mail-in ballots scanned by the end of the day on Wednesday.
However, she also noted that with several write-in campaigns going on across the county, the final, official results of the election may take some extra time this year.
“I understand there’s a lot of interest in some of those races, but we probably won’t know the results of those for a while. Counting all the write-ins will delay the official count a bit.”
She said the write-in votes will probably take a week or more to process.
“I’m hearing of a lot of write-in campaigns going on, maybe more than we through. It’ll take a while to process votes for all of those.”
In neighboring Forest County, where one of the biggest contested races is for the Sheriff’s portion, officials may see varied turnouts in different municipalities.
“I’m not really sure what to expect (for voter turnout),” Director of Elections Jean Ann Hitchcock said.
“If the mail-ins say anything, it should be a pretty good turnout overall, but you just never know. It can depend on the weather, too.”
Hitchcock noted that having a hotly contested race can also lead to bigger turnouts in some municipalities than others.
“We do have one township, Barnett Township, that has a pretty big contest going on over supervisors with write-ins, so we’re expecting a bigger turnout there.
According to Hitchcock, officials in Forest County don’t expect to need more than a couple of hours to process their mail-in votes.
“We’re not expecting any issues and hopefully everything will run smoothly as it has in the past.”
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