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A voter in Easton’s City Council District 2 received an incorrect mail-in ballot and the Northampton County Election office issued the correct ballot, the county said in a statement late Friday afternoon.
“We are aware that one voter received an incorrect ballot due to human error,” the statement said. “As soon as the issue was brought to our attention, we acted immediately to correct it, and the voter was able to complete the correct ballot. We are continuing to review whether anyone else has been affected and have implemented a plan to mitigate any ongoing issues.” The statement did not elaborate on what the plan involves.
It’s unknown if anyone else in District 2 received an incorrect ballot.
The problem was revealed earlier Friday by District 2 city council candidate Sharbel Koorie, who posted information about the mixup on his Facebook page.
“A voter in the 8th Ward East area of the City of Easton received a mail-in a ballot with the correct envelope label but the wrong ballot for district 2. The ballot he received was for district 3 and had Susan Hartranft-Bittinger’s name on it, not my name or my opponent’s name,” he wrote on Facebook. Hartranft-Bittinger, a Democrat and an Easton Area School Board member, is unopposed for the District 3 seat on city council.
Koorie, a Republican, is running against Democrat Julie Zando-Dennis in the district that encompasses much of the city’s West Ward.
Koorie accompanied the voter to the election office in the Northampton County Government Center, 669 Washington St., in Easton; the voter was able to fill out the correct District 2 ballot.
“They believe someone grabbed the wrong ballot by accident and mailed it,” Koorie said he was told. “They believe that if there were more people with incorrect ballots they would have already called by now.”
Northampton County has experienced problems with voting machines on Election Day in recent years. The machines improperly tallied votes in a few selected contests in the elections of 2019 and 2023, which required a review of the backup paper summaries to determine the actual vote count.
Other Pennsylvania counties have had similar problems with issuing mail-in ballots. In this election cycle alone, VoteBeat reported, several countries issued a total of 68 duplicate ballots. Officials said only one ballot per voter would have been counted, however.
If anyone has a problem with a ballot, they should call the county at 610-829-6500.
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