Counties support SB 784, which contains county asks for our top elections priorities, including seven days for pre-canvassing and moving the mail-in ballot application deadline to 15 days before the election. We urge Senators to approve the legislation as currently written, without additional amendments. CCAP and counties statewide have been calling on the General Assembly for months to provide these two simple and logical adjustments to assist them with smoother administration of mail-in voting and to help counties provide more timely election results. Together, these two changes would address the vast majority of challenges counties faced in implementing mail-in ballots in 2020.

Counties appreciate the work of the General Assembly to assess Pennsylvania’s elections and propose various reforms, however, anything beyond these two simple administrative fixes need much more time to be reviewed and implemented. Counties stand ready to serve as a partner to assist in the development of more comprehensive changes that can be properly implemented and lead to statewide success. That said, counties ask that any amendments to add further elections reforms or requirements be held off at this time and that work on other Election Code reforms be done separately from this bill. Counties know there is a lot of interest in other updates and changes to the Election Code and are absolutely interested in working with the General Assembly on those, but first and foremost, what counties really need is two priority fixes to help improve the processes currently in law.