Judge orders Bucks County to extend mail ballot deadline following Trump legal challenge

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A Pennsylvania judge ordered Bucks County to extend its mail ballot deadline to 5 p.m. Friday.

The order stems from a legal challenge by the Trump campaign, which alleged the county turned away voters who stood in line to request mail ballots before the original Tuesday 5 p.m. deadline.

The county released a statement Wednesday noting that its its Board of Elections office in Doylestown will be open from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday to serve voters applying for, receiving and returning on-demand mail ballots. Voters can also request and access on-demand mail ballot voting at the county’s two other voter services satellite offices from 8 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday.

Voters who are in line by close of business will be able to complete on-demand mail ballot voting, in accordance with the judge’s ruling.

“We are thankful to our Board of Elections staff for their professionalism, and we ask that County residents extend to them consideration, understanding and kindness while they do the important work of conducting a free and fair election,” the statement read. “This administration continues to ask the Pennsylvania General Assembly for much needed reform and clarity in the election law and to codify what is being decided in courts around the Commonwealth.”

Republican organizers in the county said the long lines Tuesday and cut-offs for on-demand mail ballot voting in the days prior to the deadline affected a number of voters.

“There were people there waiting at 2 [p.m.], 2:15 [p.m.], coming up to line and being told you can’t vote today because we can’t handle the applications,” Joann Baer, Warrington Republican Committee chairwoman, said of the scene Tuesday. “That is voter interference.”

Ed Sheppard, communications chair for the Doylestown Republican Committee, said he was “in real time getting messages from multiple people who were trying to vote and were being turned away.”

In social media posts published Tuesday, the county said all voters who were in line before the deadline were able to submit requests for a mail ballot.

“We are aware that, due to a miscommunication, individuals in line to apply for an on-demand mail-in ballot were briefly told they could not be accommodated,” the statement read. “In fact, these voters were given the opportunity to submit mail-in ballot applications today.”

Trump and Republican organizers across the country have been encouraging voters to use mail ballots and early voting, a pivot from Trump’s previous rhetoric claiming mail ballot voting was unreliable.

The strategy, Sheppard said, has worked: An additional 1,000 Republican voters signed up for mail ballots in Doylestown alone. As of Monday afternoon, he said that more than 70% of them have cast their vote.

Pennsylvania, unlike many other states, does not do early voting. But the state does have “on-demand mail ballot voting” — a process in which voters can request, receive, complete and return a mail ballot in person at county elections offices.

Officials now say the increased interest in “on-demand” mail ballot voting has put a strain on elections offices.

State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, chair of the Bucks County Democratic Committee, said Republicans and Democrats alike were turned away when they couldn’t be accommodated during the election offices’ business hours.

“This has nothing to do with disenfranchising voters, nor has this anything to do with partisanship,” he said, adding that the lawsuit is “an attempt by the Trump campaign to create an issue where it doesn’t really exist for their own political gain.”

Santarsiero distinguished between early voting and on-demand mail ballot voting.

“I think we should have true early voting in Pennsylvania, where anyone can vote before Election Day, if that’s what they choose to do,” he said. “But we don’t have that.”

Baer, the Warrington Republican Committee chairperson, said the county “should have anticipated” the increase in demand for mail ballots. She said she has also spoken with a dozen voters who requested their mail ballots a month ago and have yet to receive them.

“They know that there was a push on the mail in ballots,” she said. “The Democrats have been doing this for years, and now the Republicans are on board and supporting this process, and now they don’t have the manpower to manage it, and that’s the responsibility of our commissioners who oversee the board of elections.”

Baer said the issues with early voting have Republican organizers “concerned with the process,” but Sheppard said more Republicans will be encouraged to vote by mail.

“We’re motivated, and in this instance, I think this is going to motivate us more because they tried to stop us,” he said.

Santarsiero said he also expects “a big turnout on both sides at the end of the day.”

“Nobody who wants to vote is going to be turned away,” he said.