County election board adopts advance notification for defective mail-in ballots

This article was funded by LebTown donors as part of our Civic Impact Reporting Project.

The Lebanon County Elections Board adopted policy Thursday to notify voters who file a mail-in ballot with a missing signature in advance of Election Day.

The request for this policy came from the same group of protestors who attended a commissioners meeting earlier in the day to ask for adoption of a resolution that would strongly discourage county agencies from signing 287(g) agreements for immigration enforcement with the federal government.  While the 287(g) requested resolution was not adopted due to a lack of a second on a motion, the elections board, which consists of the county commissioners, unanimously approved the ballot notification action.

The approval of the pre-Election Day notification for outer envelopes missing a signature came after public comments from about 10 supporters and lengthy discussion between board members about the wording of the motion.

Terry Woodnorth of South Lebanon Township said he’s an election judge who votes by mail-in ballot and would hate to leave his post to vote at his home precinct if his mail-in ballot was found on Election Day to have a defect.

“As you know, in-person voters will be notified immediately by the DS2000 scanner if their ballot has a problem and cannot be counted. They can then fix their ballot and immediately recast it,” Woodnorth said. “Mail-in voters deserve the same opportunity to remedy defective ballot envelopes equivalent to Election Day voters, which means being notified of the problem when the ballot has been received by the election bureau.” 

Elections board member Jo Ellen Litz read from a prepared statement, which she provided to the press, in support of three actions. She called for a review to ensure there’s a signature and correct date on the outer envelope, and that the secrecy envelope is enclosed within the mailing envelope. That could be accomplished several ways, by a punch hole in the outer envelope or by weighing the returned ballot on a scale. 

“Lebanon County must modify its policy before the ’26 primary election to ensure that mail-in ballots voters who make a disqualifying mistake, that would include the three things I went over, the date, the signature, and the yellow private secrecy envelope, are notified immediately upon receipt of the ballot packet by Lebanon County via the accurate SURE code entry,” Litz said. 

During discussion, Litz made several motions to include all three provisions as part of the county’s new policy concerning defective mail-in ballots, but those efforts died due to a lack of a second from her fellow board members. 

Board chairman Bob Phillips and member Mike Kuhn both noted that the group requesting the ballot envelope review had only asked for notification for missing signatures while stating that their request is consistent with current state law.

Litz said her ultimate goal, as is the case with the group requesting the implementation of pre-election notification, is to ensure that all qualified voters regardless of their party registration have a chance to cast an accurate ballot in an election. 

She provided statistics for the 2024 General Election noting that 34 mail-in ballots in Lebanon County had an incorrect date, 29 had no date, 23 were missing the secrecy envelope, and 38 had no signature. For each of those categories, most were by Republican voters, she said, which is consistent with the Republican Party’s registration margin of 2-1 over registered Democratic voters in Lebanon County. 

Both Kuhn and Phillips said there is a certain amount of responsibility on the part of the voter to ensure a ballot is filed properly. (Kuhn noted that both Phillips and he had gone to nursing homes for those residents whose ballots were defective.)

“It is fair the way people get the ballots and it’s not rocket science to complete one of these ballots and follow simple instructions to get it back,” Kuhn said. “That requires a signature and a date, but apparently some people don’t get that right.” 

Court cases

Lebanon County solicitor Matt Bugli reviewed recent court cases regarding mail-in ballots and the process for curing them. 

“In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, there was a Commonwealth Court order pertaining to voters’ right to cast a provisional ballot. So what we did then in response to the Commonwealth Court order is we implemented a policy where when we were opening the ballot at 7 a.m. on election day and there was a disqualifying error whether it was an envelope, whether it was a missing signature or whether it was a missing date, that voter received notice on election day,” Bugli said.

Bugli said he spent a large portion of the 2024 election on the phone attempting to notify mail-in voters whose ballots were faulty so that they could get to their local voting precinct to cast a provisional ballot before polls closed at 8 p.m.

“It was a very time-consuming process. I personally made probably about 150 phone calls. A lot of people were very appreciative. I know our election staff worked tirelessly throughout the morning on election day in 2024 to get that data,” he recalled. “However, there is that component that some people that I reached were out of town. They weren’t able to make it back to Lebanon County to get to their precinct by 8 p.m.”

That notification policy continued in 2025 for both elections, he added.

“In the meantime, there were two important decisions. We had the federal court decision, as was referenced by Commissioner Litz. That was the Aiken decision. That is the decision that states that even if a ballot is missing a signature, or if, let me clarify, if a ballot is missing a date, but not a signature, then it is to still be counted,” Bugli said. “That reduced our number of voters that we had to contact because we were still counting those ballots. Then the Center for Coldfield Justice case came out. That case pertained to notifying voters and essentially it just required that the county board provide some form of notice because we were already doing that in the form of a phone call or an email on election day.”

A separate Supreme Court case ruled on in 2025, Bugli noted, was whether the review of the envelope constituted pre-canvassing, which is illegal prior to election day. 

“There was a dispute. The way that pre-canvassing is defined in the law, it is the inspection and opening of the ballot. Some people argue that if you inspect the ballot but don’t open it, that constitutes pre-canvassing, which you can’t do until 7 a.m. on election day,” Bugli said. “Ultimately, however, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled in the Coldfield Justice case in a 4-3 decision that merely inspecting the ballot but not opening it does not constitute precanvassing, and thus that can be done prior to election day. So this is totally up to the discretion of the board.” 

It was stated the county will continue to attempt to notify mail-in ballot voters whose ballots may contain other defectives on Election Day, in addition to notifying immediately once the mail-in ballot is received and the signature is missing under this new policy.

“I think the commissioners did what was legally required, which is, you know, provide an opportunity for voters to cast a provisional ballot in the event that there’s a visible error on the exterior of their envelopes,” Michael Schroeder of South Annville Township told LebTown after the meeting. “I mean, they could have gone one step further and followed what Commissioner Litz had suggested about actually, you know, being able to make sure there is an interior secrecy ballot. But that’s next, maybe a step at a time. Hopefully that step will be taken as we move forward.”

Schroeder is a co-organizer of the protest group Mondays with Meuser, which has been holding rallies at the county municipal building to call for Congressman Dan Meuser (R-PA9) to hold public meetings with his constituents, including those who live in Lebanon County.

Mail-in ballot & voter registration figures 

The number of mail-in ballots requested by Lebanon County voters for the primary election on Tuesday, May 19, is down from previous years, currently sitting at just under 7,200, according to Sean Drasher, who heads the Voter Registration/Elections Office.

The mail-in ballot figures as of Thursday’s meeting were 4,062 Democratic, 3,113 Republican, and three with no party affiliation, according to an absentee/mail-in ballot summary spreadsheet provided by election officials.

Concerning a mailing date for mail ballots, they are slated to be sent to voters in mid-April, with an approximate targeted mail date of April 15, Drasher said.

“We are down significantly over previous elections, including the municipal, which surprised me,” he said. “Our numbers coming in day to day are not very high, which also surprises me. Normally right now we’d be having a big uptick. We aren’t. You’ll see the parties have both dropped, but those are our numbers where we stand.” 

Drasher also provided the latest active registered active voters.  

“There are 93,643 registered active voters. That is after purging a lot earlier this year, and yet we still are netting an increase again. The report that was run right before I started here, we were at 88,000 (registered voters),” he added.

Current party registration in Lebanon County is 52,659 Republicans, 25,254 Democrats, 544 Libertarians, 114 Greens, and 15,072 listed in the other category.

Sticker contest

The results are in for the two first-ever sticker contests of the county’s election office.

Entries were accepted from students in kindergarten through 6th grade for the future voter category and from students in 7th through 12th grades in the “I Voted” contest.

The county received 135 entries in the future voter competition and 11 entries from older youths for the “I Voted” contest. The winning entries were: Elise Stoner, 11th grade, Paloma School, “I Voted,” and Aubree Gross, age 12, Cedar Crest Middle School, in the future voter competition. 

The two winners may be displayed this summer at the Mount Gretna Outdoor Art Show. Winners were picked by a panel of judges that included county officials and commissioners in their role as election board members.

May election ballot

An agenda item concerning approval of the May primary election ballot was not discussed before the meeting was adjourned. It wasn’t known as of publication when a public meeting will be convened to approve the ballot for the May 19 primary.

Important primary election dates

The following are important election dates for the 2026 primary election on May 19: 

• May 4 – Last day to register to vote in the primary elections.
• May 12 – Last day to apply for a mail-in ballot
• May 19 – Election Day. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• May 19 – Completed mail-in ballots must be received by 8 p.m.