Despite some recent legal tussles over the counting of mail ballots, all voters in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania are eligible to vote by mail in the upcoming general election for president, U.S. Senate and other offices on Nov. 5.
Here’s a quick guide on how to vote by mail, the deadlines, and issues that advocates are fighting over in court.
First, make sure you’re registered to vote
Two key deadlines are coming up. First, the deadline to register to vote is Oct. 21. That’s regardless whether you’re going to do it by mail or in-person on Election Day.
You can register online, print out an application and mail it in, or pick up a form at a post office or library.
You can also register in person. In Philly, you can go to the Board of Elections in City Hall, Room 140, or one of the city’s satellite election offices. Ten of those offices are open now and three more are scheduled to open soon, according to the Office of City Commissioners.
The office in City Hall is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The satellite offices are open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends.
You can also register in person at PennDOT driver’s license centers, state liquor stores, and certain other government offices.
If you want a registration form mailed to you, or have other questions, call the city’s voter registration office at 215-686-1590. The Board of Elections can be reached at 215-686-3469.
You can check your registration status here.
Get your ballot — and fill it out correctly
The other important deadline, to apply for a mail ballot, is Oct. 29 at 5 p.m. Do it online, print out the application and mail it in, or go to an elections office and they can give you a ballot on the spot.
You’ll have to provide your driver’s license number, the last four digits of your Social Security number, or other approved ID.
Once you receive your ballot, use a black or blue pen to fill in the bubbles for the candidates you’re voting for.
The ballot comes with two envelopes: a yellow secrecy envelope that has “Official Election Ballot” written all over, and a white and gray return envelope that’s pre-printed for mailing.
First, seal the completed ballot in the yellow secrecy envelope. Then put the yellow envelope in the return envelope, and seal that as well.
On the back of the return envelope, sign your name at the “X.” Below your name, write the date — that is, the date when you’re filling out the ballot — in the provided space.
It’s very important to sign and correctly date the envelope, for reasons explained below.
If a disability prevents you from signing, a witness can help you, and they have to fill out another form on the right side of the back of the envelope.
In addition to universal mail voting, Pennsylvania also has absentee voting, which is primarily for people with permanent disabilities. In addition, emergency absentee voting is available if you have a last-minute issue that will keep you from getting to the polls on Election Day. Here’s some info on those options and how to apply for them.
There’s a different process for military and overseas voters to request absentee ballots. Visit this page for instructions on how to apply.
Options for submitting your ballot
You can send in your ballot via U.S. Mail, but make sure to do so at least several days before Election Day. Regardless of the postmark date, it must arrive at the city’s election office by Nov. 5 at 8 p.m. or it won’t count.
Alternately, you can deposit the ballot in one of the city’s many official drop boxes or at the Board of Elections office in City Hall. Here’s a map of locations of the boxes. The drop box deadline is 8 p.m. on Election Day.
That means you could apply for a mail ballot, fill it out, and submit it in a single visit to an elections office.
Military and overseas absentee voters get a little more time. Their ballots must be mailed by Monday, Nov. 4, at 11:59 p.m., and received by the Board of Elections by Tuesday, Nov. 12.
Note that you can’t drop off your completed mail or absentee ballot at a polling place on Election Day.
After you mail in or drop off your ballot, you can check its status online.
An FAQ for snafus
If you’re voting by mail or absentee ballot, you obviously can’t also vote in person on Election Day. One person, one vote.
But what if you receive a mail ballot, and then decide that you want to vote in person instead? That you can do, by “spoiling” your mail ballot.
Go to your polling place on Election Day (you can find it here), surrender the ballot to the site’s judge of elections, and sign a statement declaring you’re giving it up. Then you can vote in person on a voting machine.
What if you make a mistake when filling out your ballot, or it gets damaged in some way (e.g., the envelopes sealed up due to humidity), or you lose it? Your first option is to visit an elections office and get a new one. Or, if there’s enough time left before the election, call the Board of Elections and they’ll mail you a fresh ballot.
And what if your ballot is messed up or missing — but you can’t get to an elections office, or it’s too late to request a new one? Your only remaining option is to go to your polling place on Election Day and vote using a paper provisional ballot.
Provisional ballots are just as valid as the other ways to vote. It can take a little longer for them to be tallied, because election officials have to verify each voter’s eligibility, but the City Commissioners offer the assurance that “All valid Provisional Ballots are counted in every election!”
The fight for a cure
The signature and handwritten date required on the outer return envelope have been causing headaches for election officials and voters, and spurring legal disputes, since universal mail voting was approved in Pennsylvania in 2019.
For example, this past April, in the run-up to the primary election, there were at one point 1,755 ballots in Philadelphia alone that were at risk of not being counted because they had at least one of several problems and needed to be “cured.”
The most common error was a missing signature on the exterior envelope. With some of the ballots, the voter had left out the internal secrecy envelope, hadn’t written the date, or had written an incorrect date. (There were also hundreds of mail ballots that voters hadn’t even received, possibly because of errors in their address information.)
In Philadelphia and other counties, the envelopes were redesigned this year to reduce errors, but some people still make mistakes that must be corrected before their votes can be counted.
In August a panel of Commonwealth Court judges ruled that ballots without correct dates written on the outside envelopes should not be thrown out, overturning past practice.
The state Supreme Court reversed the ruling on a technicality, and in late September a group of left-leaning groups and voting rights advocates asked the justices to reinstate the decision.
Separately, the state and national Republican parties have asked the state Supreme Court to restrict counties from telling voters if they will throw out their mail ballots, from allowing the voters to fix their ballots, and from letting them cast provisionals instead. Republicans say state law doesn’t allow those practices.
It’s unclear if the court will rule on any of the cases before the Nov. 5 election.
