Returned your mail ballot? How many Bucks County can expect and who's casting them
Over 42,430 Bucks County voters have returned their mail ballots for the 2023 Municipal Election with about 32,032 ballots yet to be returned, according to Pennsylvania Department of State data released Wednesday.
Democrats make up the majority of returned and pending ballots, at 70% and 61%, respectively, while GOP voters account for about 22% of returned ballots and 25% of pending ballots.
The no-excuse mail-in ballots have typically been favored by Democrats since they were first used in 2020 after the passage of Act 77 in 2019, which expanded mail voting beyond absentee ballots.
Mail ballots must be returned to one of the county’s Board of Elections offices by 8 p.m. on Nov. 7 in order to be counted. More information on how to return a mail ballot, including a list of drop box locations, can be found on the county’s website at www.buckscounty.gov.
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Mail turnout by the numbers
State voter registration records updated on Oct. 30 show there are currently just under 471,965 registered voters in Bucks County. About 75,666 voters, or 16%, have requested to vote by mail next week.
Democrats have a roughly 25% turnout rate in the mail ballots as of Wednesday — about 9% of Democrats have returned their ballots and 15% pending.
About 10% of unaffiliated and independent voters chose mail ballots, with a nearly even split between pending and returned ballots.
Republicans fall just behind other voters with a 9% mail turnout, also an even split for ballot return status.
About 2,355 ballots have been returned to Bucks County daily since early October, hitting their highest daily total on Oct.17 with over 6,000 ballots coming in.
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While the state data provides an estimate on how many ballots have been returned, those numbers could change after the polls open on Nov. 7.
While election workers can detect potential problems early, like a missing signature or a ballot missing its privacy envelope, the county can’t open and inspect the ballots until polls open at 7 a.m. on Election Day.
Mail ballots with potentially disqualifying issues are segregated and the Board of Elections will vote on whether to include those ballots in the final tally after the polls close.
Mail ballots in PA
Just over 1.06 million voters across Pennsylvania applied for a mail ballot for the coming election.
Apart from Allegheny County, which received 142,685 applications and accounted for almost 14% of the state’s data, Philadelphia and its suburban neighbors topped the list for applications this year.
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About 11% of requests were for Philadelphia voters, 9% in Montgomery County, 7% in Bucks, Chester County took 5% and Delaware County voters made up 4.6% of the applications.
Just over 54% of all mail ballots in the state have been returned, about 40% of the returned ballots from Democrats, 11% from Republicans and other voters making up about 4%.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Almost 16% of Bucks County voters chose mail ballots for 2023 election
