Luzerne County getting ready for busy 2023 municipal election year

Luzerne County is now embarking on a busy municipal election year, when hundreds of candidates will vie for county, municipal and school board seats.

Candidates can start picking up packets for the May 16 primary election on Wednesday at the county election bureau in the Penn Place Building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Wilkes-Barre.

Feb. 14 is the first day candidates are permitted to circulate and file petitions.

The roster of candidates will become clear around March 7, which is the deadline to circulate and file petitions.

In response to ballot errors that surfaced in the last municipal election year, 2021, county Acting Election Director Beth McBride said she has implemented an additional proofing step, according to an email she sent to the five-citizen county Election Board.

Starting with this year’s primary, all municipalities and school districts will be required to sign off on sample ballots to ensure the open seats they had supplied to the election bureau are correct, McBride said.

Candidates also will be required to review and sign off on sample ballots, she said. Information will be included in the candidate packets so they are aware of this expectation, she told the board.

Past errors

Shickshinny’s 2021 general election ballot had wrongly stated voters should select four borough council members even though only three seats were open. County officials said the error was the borough’s fault because a borough staffer had officially informed the county election bureau four seats were open before that year’s primary.

The election bureau requires each municipality to certify the offices and terms that should appear on the ballot.

Because the borough stated the incorrect number, the county sent a courtesy notice to Shickshinny voters indicating they should select up to three candidates in that race.

The borough’s mayor had argued the county should have corrected the error before the general election because she spotted the error on her primary mail ballot and alerted the election bureau. However, county officials said the borough never submitted an amended form seeking corrective action.

County officials had said errors in three other municipalities were made by the county’s voting system vendor — Dominion Voting Systems Inc. — and not detected by the county election bureau when it proofed and signed off on the 2021 general election ballots.

In Plymouth Township, mail ballots were sent to 323 voters incorrectly stating one supervisor seat was open when it should have been two. Mail ballots for Bear Creek Township voters switched the candidate names for the tax collector and constable seats.

The county sent corrected replacement ballots and letters explaining the errors to mail voters in both townships and fixed the errors on Election Day ballots at polling places.

A Swoyersville council candidate also was listed as the Republican nominee when the correct affiliation should have been Republican/Non-Affiliated. Because the error was discovered too close to the general, it was only corrected for the Election Day ballots.

Then-Plymouth Township Supervisor Gale Conrad said at the time she will hold the county at its word that ballot proofing will be initiated sooner and stepped up in future elections.

County Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams said last week she has been advocating a mandatory inspection by municipalities and school districts before ballots are finalized and earlier proofing to allow time for corrections before mail ballots are sent.

“We ended up with a lot of redoing of ballots in 2021, and that equated to delays,” Williams said.

Ballot progress

McBride said municipalities and school districts are required to submit an official form by Feb. 14 identifying the office seats that must be placed on the primary ballot along with the length of each term.

She sent a letter to each jurisdiction Jan. 11 with the form and deadline, noting they also must list partial-term vacancies that must be filled in this year’s election due to the death or resignation of an elected office holder.

To date, the election bureau has received 58 responses to 96 letters hat were sent to municipalities and school districts, McBride said. She plans to follow up with reminders to those not yet responding.

Municipalities and school districts that did not receive a letter should email elections@luzernecounty.org.

“Given statutory deadlines, I’m prioritizing this so that we can mitigate any issues early on and continue to meet the required deadlines,” McBride told the board.

The bureau has started posting information on the upcoming primary on the election page at luzernecounty.org.