Local election officials in Pennsylvania say ballots don’t always arrive in the best condition. They may be ripped, stained by coffee or food, or even been burned on the edges. In these situations, officials can reconstruct the ballot in a duplicate to ensure that they are properly counted by election equipment.
The process, commonly referred to as “ballot duplication,” involves taking a damaged ballot that can’t be scanned by election machines and transcribing the votes onto a new, clean ballot that can be counted. The original ballot is preserved in this process. Ballot duplication can also be used if voters improperly marked their ballot, such as using the wrong type of writing tool.
“There’s always in every election some ballots that are damaged or unscannable, whether it was ripped or coffee spilled on the ballot, which made the scanner not be able to read it. There’s plenty of reasons why a ballot might need to be duplicated,” said Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, who serves on the board that oversees elections in the city. “Any ballot that is unscannable by the tabulation equipment would need to go through this process.”