When the Legislature does not act, counties carry the burden. That was the theme across the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania’s top three legislative priorities, released Wednesday.
The bipartisan group wants vote-by-mail reforms, as well as additional funding for Emergency 911 and mental health services.
On voting, counties’ complain that Act 77, the 2019 law that established no-excuse mail-in voting, is unclear on several points, creating a patchwork of solutions across Pennsylvania’s 67 counties that, in turn, resulted in multiple lawsuits.
“Taxpayers across the Commonwealth in every county have paid many, many times over for lawsuits related to elections. That never happened before Act 77,” said Snyder County commissioner Joseph Kantz.
Pennsylvania is the only state without a uniform rule spelling out how voters can fix errors on mail-in ballots, according to Ballotpedia, a nonprofit encyclopedia of American politics. Pennsylvania is one of nine states where election workers cannot begin processing mail-in ballots until Election Day, and has two million more registered voters than the next largest state without pre-canvassing, New Jersey, per the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“Counties are pushing for clarity so that those elections can be delivered in a uniform way, in a consistent way and on time,” said Sherene Hess, an Indiana County commissioner and president of the commissioners association.
Counties have been pushing for the same reforms since at least 2021. This year, Hess said she is hearing support among legislative leadership for giving counties more time to process mail-in ballots and expanding the cutoff period for requesting mail-in ballots from the current 7 days to 15.
Key lawmaker’s take
Requests for comment from the Legislature’s dueling majorities – Democrats in the Pennsylvania House and Republicans in the Senate – were not returned.
Any election reform bill would have to go through Sen. Cris Dush, R-Jefferson, who leads the State Government Committee.
Changing the deadline to request mail-ballots “should be easy,” Dush said Wednesday, then laughed. In recent years, resistance to some election reforms has been unpredictable, he said.
As for pre-canvassing – the process of opening mail-in ballots before Election Day, confirming voter signatures and preparing them to be counted – Dush said he would prefer a different solution where mail-in ballots be processed at the precinct level, all on Election Day.
That would require counties to receive ballots at a central location, sort them and then deliver them to each precinct where poll workers would have to open the ballot return and secrecy envelopes, and then scan each ballot one at a time.
This is the process Pennsylvania used for absentee ballots before there was universal access, Dush said. At least two other states, New Hampshire and West Virginia, use this procedure. Both states’ populations are less than 20% of Pennsylvania’s.
Before 2019, Pennsylvania typically saw tens of thousands of absentee ballots cast each election, not millions (1.9 million mail ballots were cast in the November election).
In contrast, the Department of State, which serves as the state’s elections administrative agency, calls pre-canvassing a “a commonsense legislative reform” that would “dramatically ease the workload of county election staff on Election Day and would speed up the vote count.”
The Department also supports ballot curing – allowing voters to correct mistakes on mail-in ballot envelopes on or before Election Day, according to spokesperson Amy Gulli.
Dush said Act 77 was clear on dropboxes and curing, in that it did not mention those at all and therefore they should not be allowed. He said state courts started the confusion by telling counties they could employ them, which in turn prompted legal challenges, some of which are ongoing.
The commissioners association does not take a stand on whether dropboxes or ballot curing should be allowed, only that the Legislature should amend the law to assure consistency.
“This is about delivering an election regardless of party and ideology,” Hess said. “One of counties’ most basic, fundamental obligations is to deliver safe, secure and accurate elections.”
911 and mental health funding
The state already allocates money to counties for 911 operations and for mental health funding, but is not enough, county commissioners said Wednesday.
“All of the legislators are supportive of these matters, but there are a number of barriers,” Hess said. “Mostly funding, to be honest.”
Whether from the state or county, taxpayers are footing the bill for these services, but that burden is not evenly distributed across the state, Hess said. Some counties have stronger tax bases than others, and smaller counties would have a harder time of covering the costs if the state does not step up.
A 2023 law increased the annual surcharge that funds 911 services to $1.95 for every connected phone in the state. That covers 80% of the cost for the 911 system, with counties covering the rest.
The surcharge is set to expire in January 2026. If it lapses, counties would have to shoulder the additional costs. Hess and the commissioners group are asking that the surcharge be renewed and increased to about $2.15, with annual adjustments to account for inflation.
In providing mental health services, counties are “stretching state funding to its breaking point,” said Northampton County Commissioner Lori Vargo Heffner.
“It’s not hyperbole to say the lack of adequate state funding paired with increased demand has pushed the collapse of the community mental health system,” Heffner said.
The commissioners are asking for $100 million for the county mental health base in the coming fiscal year, less than half of what they say is really needed.
Current wait times for mental health services are at least 6 months, if not longer, Heffner said, pushing people either into hospitals or the criminal justice system, both of which are more expensive and less effective alternatives.