{"id":317203,"date":"2026-10-29T22:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T22:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/317203\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T22:44:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T22:44:16","slug":"pa-election-officials-stress-security-and-voter-preparedness-ahead-of-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/317203\/","title":{"rendered":"PA election officials stress security and voter preparedness ahead of midterms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Michael<\/a>\"Tasmin<\/a>HARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014<\/p>\n

With the midterm elections just days away, Pennsylvania candidates are making their final push across the state, including the Susquehanna Valley, to connect with voters ahead of Tuesday\u2019s Election Day. <\/p>\n

All state House seats, half of the Senate, and the governor\u2019s office are on the ballot, with significant implications for the state\u2019s policy and legislative direction over the next two years.<\/p>\n

WGAL’s Brian Roche sat down with Dan Mallinson, an associate professor of public policy and administration within Penn State University to talk about what the next two years could look like. We’ve posted that interview in the video player above.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt is encouraging voters to trust the state\u2019s voting systems, emphasizing their security at both the county and state levels. Schmidt pointed to measures such as paper ballots, post-election audits, and voter identification procedures as safeguards to ensure accurate results for both mail-in and in-person voting. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s very natural to have questions. Elections have changed so much in the past several years, but they’ve changed for the better in Pennsylvania. Every voter votes by a paper ballot. There’s a paper ballot record of every vote that’s cast that’s used in audits after every election. I would also encourage them to rely on trusted sources of information,\u201d Schmidt said. <\/p>\n

Mail-in ballots<\/p>\n

New data from the Pennsylvania State Department reveals that nearly 75% of the more than 1.3 million mail ballots requested have already been returned. For voters still holding onto their mail ballots, the U.S. Postal Service advises against mailing them at this point. Instead, voters are encouraged to drop them off in person at their county elections office or an official ballot drop box. All ballots must be received by election offices by 8 p.m. on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Election monitors coming to Pa.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice\u2019s Civil Rights Division plans to send election monitors to polling locations in four Pennsylvania counties: Philadelphia, Allegheny, Luzerne, and Lehigh. These monitors will be present on Election Day to oversee compliance with federal voting rights laws. <\/p>\n

As Election Day nears, officials are working to ensure voters feel confident in the security of the election process and are prepared to cast their ballots.<\/p>\n

National Investigative Correspondent John Cardinale “Gets the Facts” on who you could see at the polls, what’s legal vs. illegal and what should do if you feel like someone is intimidating voters. You can watch that report below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014 With the midterm elections just days away, Pennsylvania candidates are making their final push across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30813,894,13134,129245,128783,81962,129244,22794,5497,803,13135,31090,128474,13434,28,30,29,69,128475,2483,128476,2812],"class_list":["post-317203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-al-schmidt","tag-allegheny-county","tag-ballot-drop-box","tag-brian-roche","tag-civil-rights-division","tag-county-elections-office","tag-dan-mallinson","tag-department-of-justice","tag-election-day","tag-luzerne-county","tag-mail-in-ballots","tag-midterms","tag-paper-ballots","tag-penn-state-university","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-philadelphia","tag-post-election-audits","tag-susquehanna-valley","tag-voter-identification","tag-wgal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317203","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=317203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}