{"id":282158,"date":"2026-09-09T11:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T11:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/282158\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T11:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T11:30:10","slug":"lehigh-county-adding-five-ballot-drop-boxes-for-midterms-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/282158\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh County adding five ballot drop boxes for midterms elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lehigh County voters who might be nervous about leaving their mail-in ballots in the hands of the U.S. Postal Service will soon have five more options to get those ballots counted.<\/p>\n

County Executive Josh Siegel on Tuesday announced that the county elections office will install five state-of-the-art ballot drop boxes throughout the county ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

The new boxes will double the number that the county has, from five to 10. They were paid for through a $100,000 election integrity grant, and will be installed in Upper Macungie, South Whitehall, Upper Saucon and Salisbury townships, and Emmaus.<\/p>\n

Those communities were chosen by the number of mail-in ballots requested relative to their distance from a current ballot drop box location. Officials are still working out the details of the exact locations, but will share that information when it becomes available, Siegel said.<\/p>\n

The Sentinel Secured Smart Dropbox units are made of steel and are fire resistant. They have a camera that records images of both the envelope and the person dropping it, and scans a barcode on the ballot envelope to let the election office know in real time when a ballot has been submitted.<\/p>\n

Northampton County also is increasing its number of ballot drop boxes, from seven to 10, officials said.<\/p>\n

The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Oct. 27.<\/p>\n

The increase in ballot drop boxes comes in the wake of high-stakes litigation on the federal level about how the Postal Service should handle mail-in ballots.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump in March signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting.<\/a> Democratic lawmakers promptly filed lawsuits challenging the order. The U.S. Supreme Court could soon decide the issue.<\/p>\n

In 2024, nearly 30% of U.S. voters\u00a0cast their ballots by mail, according to federal data.<\/a><\/p>\n

Sheila Alvarado, vice chair of the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners, said she\u2019s heard from numerous constituents who are worried that their vote may be challenged. The issue disproportionately affects voters of color, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy try so hard to take that right away, you might ask? The simple answer is to keep you and me silent,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cLehigh County is working proactively to counteract this suppression against voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are approximately 255,000 registered voters in Lehigh County in a population of 375,000. Factoring out residents under the age of 18, about 87% of the eligible population is registered to vote, said Mike Paston, Lehigh County\u2019s chief clerk of elections.<\/p>\n

There have been about 30,000 requests for a mail-in ballot ahead of the midterms, Paston said. Statistically, about 80% of requested ballots are returned.<\/p>\n

Paston urged concerned voters to take advantage of the drop boxes to avoid issues with mail delivery. Voters also can bring their mail-in ballot to the polls on Election Day and surrender it to cast a ballot in person. Provisional ballots will also be available.<\/p>\n

Siegel said he hopes voters will not be so confused by the legal challenges making headlines that they opt out of voting altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of disinformation, misinformation and uncertainty out there around the 2026 midterm general election,\u201d Siegel said. \u201cI would argue that much of that is chaos by design and intent. I believe the administration in D.C is intentionally sowing seeds of mistrust and doubt, and deliberately trying to create uncertainty around the voting process, specifically, mail-in ballots.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lehigh County voters who might be nervous about leaving their mail-in ballots in the hands of the U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,182,139,432],"class_list":["post-282158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282158","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=282158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}