Luzerne County’s election bureau released more information Monday on a Nov. 7 general election mail ballot error that caused 1,557 Wilkes-Barre voters to receive the wrong ballot.
The impacted voters are in Wards 2 to 8 and 14 to 20.
The problem occurred when the mail ballot data was exported and uploaded. At some point in the transfer, some of the Wilkes-Barre data did not line up in the correct precinct order, causing the ballots mailed to be out of sync.
The bureau discovered the problem Saturday morning because several Wilkes-Barre voters reported they had received the incorrect ballot.
Voters in these ward should be receiving the correct ballots in the mail within five to seven days, the bureau said. The printer will be delivering them to the Wilkes-Barre post office so they can be in the hands of voters as quickly as possible, the bureau said.
Mail voters receive instructions, a ballot, an unmarked white secrecy envelope and an outer envelope that contains the voter’s name and a label with a bar code that, when scanned, identifies that voter in the state’s database.
New labels have been generated, which means any ballots returned with the old label/bar code won’t be accepted, the bureau said.
The correct ballots have a note on the top flap of the outgoing envelope and the outer return envelope that states “Wilkes-Barre Ballot 10/15/23 updated.”
An email was sent to impacted voters informing them of the error, and no incorrect ballots have been received to date.
If any ballots with the incorrect outer envelope label are received, the bureau will segregate them and again attempt to contact the voter to alert them.
Voters are asked to destroy and discard the incorrect ballots and all associated envelopes.
Wilkes-Barre City Council is the only race affected by the error because council members run by district. All other races are the same for voters throughout the city.
Voters should contact the bureau if they do not receive a new ballot by Oct. 27. In that situation, voters would have the option to visit the bureau to receive a ballot or vote provisionally at the polls on Election Day. The bureau contact number is 570-825-1715.