Mail ballots are now available in 22 counties, giving Pennsylvania voters the opportunity to cast their vote early through the mail, in person at their county election office, or via drop box if available in their area.
In Pennsylvania, similar to most states, military voters and certain overseas civilian voters can also vote absentee in state and local elections.
The lawsuit accuses County Manager Romilda Crocamo of violating state election law and it claims her policy will "lead to irreparable harm to the voting rights" in Luzerne County.
Mail-in ballots are now available to voters in 17 Pennsylvania counties. Officials said that ballots should be available statewide sometime during the first week of October.
The ruling comes after election workers in the Republican-controlled county refused to tell voters whether their mail-in ballot would be counted in April’s primary election.
All election equipment used by Pennsylvania counties — ranging from ballot-marking devices used for some in-person voting to machines that tabulate mail and absentee ballots — is put through a pre-election stress test known as logic and accuracy testing. This is how it works.
The audit comes one year after Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration followed two dozen other states in offering automatic voter registration at driver’s licensing centers.
Voters elsewhere in the state who have already registered to vote by mail in the November election should begin receiving their mail ballots early in October.
The state Supreme Court took up the appeal from a Commonwealth Court decision that said Butler County had to count provisional ballots from two voters who had received automatic emails before the April primary telling them their mail-in votes had been rejected because they were so-called "naked ballots" that weren't enclosed in the provided secrecy envelope.
Following some confusion over a state law requiring counties to begin processing voters' applications for mail ballots 50 days before an election, state officials announced Wednesday that counties are still in the process of preparing mail ballots for voters.
