Lebanon County voters warned of scammers and misinformation with election on the horizon
With the Nov. 8 election less than a month away, officials are warning residents to be wary of misinformation and potential scammers looking to influence their attempts to vote.
Lebanon County’s Bureau of Registration and Elections is preparing to send out mail-in ballots shortly. Officials are projecting more than 12,000 requests for mail-in ballots.
"We have them, but we don't want to send anything out before they go through all the (Logic and Accuracy) testing," Sean Drasher, the bureau's director, said. "The ballot is the ballot, but it's just verifying that the ballots go through every single machine."
Mail-in ballots must be in the hands of election officials by 8 p.m. on Nov. 8. Any ballots received after that date, even those with a Nov. 8 postmark, are invalid.
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In most of September, the county election bureau was getting a high number of Right-to-Know requests for voting and election-related records. But since news stories hit the media, Drasher said the requests have started to subside.
"For weeks there we were getting overwhelmed," he said. "But I'm more concerned with vote disinformation...It's a lot of half-truth kind of stuff where they say something that is truthful, but then they offer further guidance that's not helpful or flat out wrong."
Officials have been warning residents about fraudulent text messages and mass mailings from outside groups that look like they are coming from the county election bureau. Drasher said the election's office does not use text messaging, and infrequently sends out mass mailings.
If residents receive a mail-in or absentee ballot in the mail that they did not request, they are asked to contact county election officials.
"If you are turning in your mail-in ballot to vote in-person, totally fine, but you have to bring in the full mail-in ballot package with you including the envelope," Drasher said.
Drasher added that the envelope has a barcode that the office traces along with the ballot.
On Thursday, Commissioners approved the purchase of a $180,000 mail sorting system and services from Runbeck Election Services headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. This system would help with mail-in ballots and absentee ballots.
"It matches up the inbound mail we get to the voter record including signature matching, which is pretty amazing," Drasher said. "It then sorts it by either precinct or tray. It's very flexible in how we organize it and set things up once we roll it out."
The new system will handle all of the office's inbound mail for elections, with Drasher saying the big benefit is it will generate a file that updates the state database. The system is already rolled out to several counties.
"Theoretically, this (system) would eliminate errors in input...human errors of scanning things in when you are doing that much mail," he said.
The purchase of this new system was through a portion of a $466,606 state election grant that commissioners voted to accept in September.
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The registration deadline to vote in the Nov 8 elections is Oct. 24. The last day to request a mail-in or absentee ballot is Nov. 1.
Matthew Toth is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at mtoth@ldnews.com or on Twitter at @DAMattToth.
This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: Lebanon County voters asked to be wary of scammers and misinformation
