Delaware County Officials Release More Than 100K Mail-In Ballots

MEDIA, PA — Delaware County officials on Monday announced that they have released more than 100,000 vote-by-mail ballots to area residents with another 9,000 ballots expected to be dropped into the mail later this week.

The release of the ballots, which began on Saturday, represents all of the vote-by-mail ballot applications that were received by Sept. 20 and the ballots for voters who selected to receive their ballots by mail for the upcoming November election when they applied to vote by mail in June, county officials said in a news release.

The county has mailed out 111,000 ballots and the Delaware County Bureau of Elections will continue to process applications to vote by mail until the Oct. 27 deadline to request a ballot passes later this month.

Voters who receive ballots are asked to carefully review ballots as well as the instructions for submitting them. Included in the mailing are two envelopes, including a smaller security envelope marked “Official election ballot” (also called a naked ballot) and a larger envelope which is marked “Voter’s declaration”, officials said in the news release. Both envelopes must be submitted to the Bureau of Elections in order to be counted.

Voters may submit their ballots by mail either by the U.S. Postal Service or by dropping them off at any Delaware County Voter Service Center with locations in Media, Upper Darby and Chester.

According to the release, voters who are concerned about delivery or simply want to confirm the status of their vote-by-mail ballot can use the Pennsylvania Department of State’s “Election Ballot Status” lookup tool at https://www.pavoterservices.pa.gov/Pages/BallotTracking.aspx.

After the voter enters their name and birthdate, the status will either say “pending” (if their application has been approved and the ballot is being prepped for release to the voter) or will show an error message (that reads “We are unable to match your information with our records”) until the application has been processed by the county.