Oct 15, 2020 4 min read

A steady stream of Washington County voters are marching to the elections office in downtown Washington to personally deliver their mail-in ballots.

An elections worker stood near the ballot box receptacle located on the second floor of the county office building Wednesday offering an “I Voted” sticker as a parade of people dropped off their ballots one right after another.

There was no line, but a new voter would usually appear in the hallway every few moments with a ballot in hand searching for the box just outside the elections office.

Like many voters who were at the office Wednesday, Dave Meehan said he was worried about the U.S. Postal Service delivering his ballot on time, so he figured he’d drive the 30 minutes from his Finleyville home to submit his vote himself.

“I’d just rather do it in person. I feel better about it then,” Meehan said. “It took a little while to get (the ballot in the mail).”

Jim Sabol of McMurray mailed in his ballot during the primary, but chose to drive down Route 19 less than three weeks before Election Day just to be on the safe side.

“Just figured it was the safe option,” Sabol said. “No question about when it will get there or if it will get there.”

But like many voters who were delivering their ballots, Sabol wasn’t sure exactly where to go inside the county office building, which is located at 100 W. Beau St. directly behind the courthouse.

“I was following the people around me,” he said.

Like everyone else, he slipped his ballot in the slot and walked away satisfied.

Hannah Lindley, the county’s assistant elections director, said they were “bombarded” with mail-in ballots Tuesday and Wednesday, and have also seen an influx of people personally turning in their ballots.

The county has sent out 38,023 ballots – which includes both mail-in and absentees – and has received 8,473 ballots marked as returned in their system as of Wednesday afternoon. She did not know the breakdown between mailed ballots and those that were turned in, but workers have had to empty the metal ballot box every hour due to the high volume of returns.

“It’s a lot, because it’s a big metal box,” Lindley said.

People have also been filling out forms at the office to receive their mail-in ballot on the spot and then go to a “polling booth” to fill out their choices and immediately return it to the workers. While it’s still considered a mail-in ballot, it’s the closest thing Pennsylvania has to early voting. She said the primary was good practice for the heavier turnout in the general election.

“The primary was a little tougher because coronavirus was more restrictive,” Lindley said. “It is overwhelming, but the primary helped us get through it and we have more (temporary workers) helping.”

Pete Martin and his wife, Paula, happily accepted their “I Voted” stickers when offered to them, and they were pleased to get the election behind them. The Eighty Four couple were in Washington running errands anyway, so they decided to vote on their way to lunch.

“We’re always up in the area,” Pete Martin said. “We just decided, ‘Let’s do it.'”

He said they weren’t worried about mailing in their ballots, but figured it was easy enough to hand deliver them.

“I don’t think mailing it would be a problem,” he said. “This is just as convenient. We had time to do it.”

Mo Obi, a student at the University of Pittsburgh, was dropping off her absentee ballot because she expected to be on campus in Oakland for the Nov. 3 election.

“I’m in school, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to vote in person,” she said. “I just wanted to drop it off in person.”

No issues have been reported with mail-in ballots in Washington County, although Allegheny County officials announced Wednesday morning that its third-party vendor sent the wrong ballots to nearly 29,000 voters. The correct ballots are being resent to those voters Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Washington County election officials said they do not use an outside vendor to process mail-in ballots and the office was humming with activity Wednesday.