Lackawanna County mistakenly mailed 545 ballots from the 2024 primary election to Republican Scranton voters ahead of the May 20 primary election, county officials said Saturday.
County elections director Beth Hopkins blamed the mistake on a printing company error. Election Systems & Software printed the ballots, she said.
Hopkins said Republican voters who received a 2024 ballot should destroy the ballot and the envelopes that came with it. The county will mail new, 2025 ballots by Wednesday, she said in an interview.
Hopkins said she learned of the mistake Saturday morning when a Republican voter called her. She immediately drove to her county office and confirmed the error. She’s unsure why the error occurred.
“So, I was able to get in touch with the printer, and they're working on correcting their error as we speak, and they're shipping the corrected ballots to me first thing Monday morning,” Hopkins said. “And all of those voters will get a new ballot in the mail with a letter explaining the error and what they need to do.”
The ballots must be in the county’s hands by May 20 at 8 p.m. to count.
Countywide, more than 12,000 voters of both parties were mailed ballots for the primary. Only the 545 Republican Scranton ballots are incorrect, Hopkins said. They are the only Scranton Republican mail-in ballots, she said.
Officials said the county held up mailing ballots for Scranton Republicans until a court case involving Bob Bolus was resolved.
Recently, a judge ruled Bolus ineligible to stay on the Republican ballot for mayor after a challenge to his ballot status. The county gave the go-ahead to print the ballots but received the wrong ones.
County elections officials did not notice the mistake before mailing the ballots. Hopkins said the ballots are returned pre-folded before they are stuffed into envelopes for mailing. Election workers typically make sure voting precinct and other information that tops a ballot is correct, she said.
“Apparently, it was not picked up,” she said. “We certainly don't like when mistakes happen, and we work really, really hard to make sure things like this and errors like this don't happen.”
The ballots were unpacked in alphabetical order by municipality.
“And you look at the first couple ballots, and obviously the (non-Scranton) county ballots were printed first, and the Scranton Republican ballots were held up for a little while because of the Bolus challenge,” she said. “So, they were printed in a separate printing batch. So, I'm just not quite sure why the printer selected an old file instead of the current file. That I'm trying to get to the bottom of now.”
Scranton has contested races for mayor and school board on the Republican ballot as well as uncontested candidates for City Council and other offices, according to a sample ballot. The Republican races for the state Superior and Commonwealth courts are also contested.
County Republican Party Chairman Dan Naylor said he spoke with Hopkins and was reassured by her answers.
“I do believe it was an honest mistake,” Naylor said. “Certainly because, in part, only Scranton is the issue. And, I mean, you have an obvious — with the Bolus situation taking place — mistake that I think they'll learn from, right?”
Patricia Beynon, one of two Republican mayor candidates, said she thinks the error “could have been an honest mistake and it’s possibly because Bolus was in the mix there.”
“I don't know, it's possible,” Beynon said. “I don't want to say it's definitely happening (an honest mistake), but, yeah, professionals generally don't make mistakes. But you don't know who was working there at the time and how that could have happened. It could have been an error.”
Beynon urged voters to avoid mail-in ballots and vote in person. Someone who receives a mail-in ballot and wants to vote in person must take the mail-in ballot to a polling place so it can be voided, she said.
“If you go to the polls and you're there and you're hands-on, in-person voting, that's the best, safest way, in my opinion,” Beynon said.
She called the mistake “par for the course” for Northeast Pennsylvania. However, Lackawanna County has avoided major ballot or other voting-related mistakes while Luzerne County has repeatedly encountered them in the last five years.
Hopkins said voters should have enough time to return correct ballots. Next Wednesday was the original target date for mailing ballots but they were ready earlier so they went out earlier, she said.
The county plans to segregate the Scranton Republican ballots to check each one to ensure it’s for the correct election, she said.
If a 2024 ballot somehow slipped through, a scanning machine would record a person as voting but would not record the votes cast on the ballot, Hopkins said.
