READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Board of Elections voted Thursday to authorize the Office of Election Services to begin processing mail-in and absentee ballot applications as they are received because of an operational need.<\/p>\n
Berks County Commissioner Christian Y. Leinbach clarified the resolution in that only the applications are being processed in accordance with state law.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year people get applications confused with ballots,\u201d he said. \u201cWe’re processing applications.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ballots may only be processed on election day.<\/p>\n
Director of Election Services Anne Norton reported that the county has received about 1,000 applications to date.<\/p>\n
Berks County Commissioner Dante Santoni Jr. reminded voters that the mail-in ballot system in Berks County is safe and secure.<\/p>\n
Santoni said he made the comments in response to media and the federal administration raising questions about mail-in voting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe encourage people to vote by mail-in ballot, unless you want to come to the polls, which is fine,\u201d Santoni said. \u201cBut we have a very secure system. It’s very safe. The 2020 election is over; it’s done. There was, there no issues with that, so let’s move on to 2026. So I just want to let our voters know and our community that mail in balloting is safe and that they should apply as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leinbach added that the county\u2019s drop box system is as secure as it possibly can be.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have video 24\/7 and when those drop boxes are opened, we have operating procedures that guarantee there are two people verifying,\u201d Leinbach said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Board of Elections voted Thursday to authorize the Office of Election Services…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14081,10071,349,10200,58365,14079,110491,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-260493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-absentee-ballot-applications","tag-anne-norton","tag-berks-county","tag-christian-y-leinbach","tag-dante-santoni-jr","tag-mail-in-ballot-applications","tag-office-of-election-services","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}