LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa. – With just 60 days until Election Day, the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to grant the U.S. Postal Service the power to verify mail-in ballots before they’re sent out, and potentially block the delivery of ballots in Pennsylvania and five other states that refused to submit voter lists.<\/p>\n
Opponents of the post office screening proposal argue it isn’t reliable and that such a change this close to the election could disenfranchise some voters.<\/p>\n
Lehigh and Northampton County election officials say they are watching the court developments very closely.<\/p>\n
At the Lehigh County elections office, preparations are well underway for the midterm election.<\/p>\n
Lehigh anticipates roughly 37,000 people will use mail in ballots.<\/p>\n
But with legal battles raging over whether the U.S. Postal System will be able to screen and potentially block delivery of some ballots.<\/p>\n
Michael Paston, Chief Clerk of Elections says his office has to prepare for every eventuality and for voter angst.<\/p>\n
“We’re adding five drop boxes, doubling our total from five to 10, which is a big addition. People who want to vote by mail but not use the mail can then drop their ballot in a drop box, which should help people feel secure about the election,” said Paston.<\/p>\n
Northampton is also adding three new boxes.<\/p>\n
Northampton County Executive Tara Zrinski talked about election preps at the latest County Council meeting.<\/p>\n
“We are monitoring those developments closely and will follow all applicable law and guidance while at the same time we urge voters to utilize drop boxes within the county because we know that the ballots are handled and secured by our trusted sheriffs,” said Zrinski.<\/p>\n
Both counties say they tapped state election integrity grants to pay for the state-of-the-art boxes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa. – With just 60 days until Election Day, the Trump administration is asking the Supreme…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,78368,723,10737],"class_list":["post-279876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-mid-term-elections","tag-trump-administration","tag-u-s-postal-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279876","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=279876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}