45°
When the Lancaster County Board of Elections begin opening and scanning the first batch of ballots at 7 a.m. on election day, Tuesday, May 17, "it became immediately apparent that a significant number of the mail ballots did not scan," the county commissioners said in a release to the press.
The ballots were printed by the mail ballot vendor, NPC, with the wrong identification code. This error prevents the ballots from being scanned on the county’s central scanners, officials say.
The original test ballots the county approved did work correctly, so "there was no way for the county to discover this vendor error prior to 7:00 am on election day, when the law requires mail ballots to be first opened," officials say.
A similar issue has happened in the past with another vendor, who the county subsequently fired and replaced with this current vendor, NPC, which serves many Pennsylvania counties, the officials explained in the release.
"These types of errors are unacceptable and we hold the vendors responsible," officials say.
The status of those ballots and all the ballots affected by this printing error is unclear at the time of publishing.
The Board of Elections plans to hold a press conference to update the public later on election day.
Click here to follow Daily Voice West Chester and receive free news updates.
