The state system that tracks voter registrations mistakenly produced two mail-in ballots for 31 Luzerne County voters, but the extras were immediately cancelled, the county announced Tuesday.
In an interview, county Bureau of Elections director Emily Cook said two voters contacted the bureau Monday to report receiving two mail-in ballots.
The bureau reported the problem to the state Department of State, according to a county news release. The bureau provided “all relevant information to assist with identifying the root cause of the SURE system error that caused duplicate ballots to be generated without triggering a warning or rejection upon receipt of the applications,” the news release says.
Cook said the ballots were not limited to a “specific party, location or age demographics.”
“I want to make it very clear that this wasn't an issue that happened because of the office,” Cook said. “It's an issue that happened through a system that we have to use, but it's used throughout the state. So, it's not a specifically Luzerne County issue. It's not something that we did ourselves.”
What is SURE?
SURE stands for Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, a system developed in the 1990s to better control voter registration and limit fraud. The Department of State oversees the system, which is accessible to all 67 county election agencies.
Efforts to obtain comment from the Department of State were not immediately successful. It’s unclear if the problem affected other counties, too.
Cook said all mail-in ballots — whether filed online or in person — pass through SURE.
“They were applications that were processed through the SURE system at various times,” Cook said. “I unfortunately don't have much detail on what exactly happened, because it's not a system that that we manage ourselves.”
What the bureau did
The bureau reviewed the county's approximately 25,000 mail-in applications and determined 31 were affected in total, Cook said.
The bureau immediately contacted all affected voters to let them know what happened and reassure them only their valid ballots would be counted.
“The second ballots were promptly cancelled within the SURE system prior to the acceptance of any ballots by the Bureau of Elections,” the news release said.
Each extra ballot had a different barcode from the original ballot, but all 31 voters received duplicate ballots at the same address, Cook said.
The county will “closely monitor” returned ballots “to ensure that only one ballot per voter is counted, the news release said.
A history of election troubles
County elections have faced various problems over the last five years.
In 2020, nine mail-in ballots for President Donald Trump were accidentally discarded.
In the 2021 primary election, Republican ballots on voting machine screens came up mistakenly as Democratic. In the 2021 municipal election, ballots had errors.
In November 2022, dozens of precincts reported shortages of paper for ballots that would be printed out and scanned after voters chose candidates.
Cook said she doesn’t feel déjà vu over the latest snafu.
“I feel like we're doing a very good job within the office,” she said. “Otherwise, everything has been going great. We got 25,000 mail-in ballots mailed out over a month in advance of the election.”
Voters with questions or concerns can call the bureau at 570-825-1715.
