Still have your mail-in ballot on Election Day? Here's what you can do with it today
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - It's Election Day and you still have your mail-in ballot, so what can you do with it?
There are two options and poll workers have said there is a recent history of people arguing with them over these mail-in ballots.
"Go to the county office building downtown today, [during] same hours that the polls are open, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and you can turn in your mail-in ballots there and it will be counted with the rest of the mail-in ballots," explained Abigail Gardner.
Option number two is to take it to your polling place.
"If you're going to surrender it to your poll worker, that's what we call it, and they will take it from you and it will get destroyed," Gardner said. "It doesn't count and you will be handed a new fresh ballot to vote in person just like everybody else."
Basically, you'll have to get in line and vote in person like everybody else and that's where these arguments come from - because many voters want to drop it off and go.
This begs another question, what if you never got your ballot or lost it?
"If you don't have that mail-in ballot to surrender, we're going to give you a provisional ballot because we need to check on the back end that you didn't actually vote by mail," Gardner explained.
Once that is verified, your provisional ballot will be tabulated and counted.
"It's not going to be counted with the rest of the votes on Election Day or election night, but it will be counted in the coming days and weeks," she said.
It takes a while to verify all the provisional votes and often they number in the thousands but that all will be counted.
As for counting votes, Gardner said the mail-in ballots and 99.9 percent of the precincts in Allegheny County should be tailed and announced by midnight. That will be the unofficial total - the official county total will come once all the military and provisional ballots are counted over the next few weeks.
