Cambria County, PA, ballot issues due to incorrect paperwork

EBENSBURG, Pa. (AP) — A problem with paper ballots has thrown Election Day into chaos in deep-red Cambria County, Pennsylvania, forcing officials to hand-count many thousands of votes in the critical swing state.

The ballots were not properly printed by William Penn Printing and could not be properly scanned by voting machines, Commissioner Keith Rager told The Post.

Officials said all votes would continue to be counted — but poll results in the county of 133,000 were likely to be delayed Tuesday evening.

A judge also agreed to keep polling places in the county open for an additional two hours, until 10 p.m., to make up for the problems.

Rager said thousands of freshly printed ballots that work in the voting machines were brought from Pittsburgh, about 70 miles away, to polling places across the county.

Shortly after 1:15 p.m. ET, officials began distributing a batch of “good” ballots that had no printing errors to polling locations.

“I want the people of our county to know that we are doing everything we can. “This was thrown at us at 7 o’clock this morning,” Rager told The Post.

“Everything is secured.”

Cambria County went for former President Donald Trump by about 68% in 2020.

Rager said shortly after polls opened at 7 a.m., officials received reports that voting machines were not scanning ballots.

“At first we thought it was a software problem and tried to fix it. Upon further investigation, we discovered there was an issue because the ballots could not be scanned into the system,” Cambria County Principal Clerk Alex Ashcom told The Post.

“In response, we have directed all other precincts to continue accepting ballots, continue to let voters vote, and collect and count them by hand rather than using the machine as a backup.”

County officials had been scrambling to funnel a new shipment of about 35,000 “good” ballots that could be read by voting machines to precincts across the county.

“Nobody throws away ballots,” Rager said.

“Starting tomorrow we will find out who is responsible,” he added, stressing that the main thing on Tuesday is to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible.

William Penn Printing did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

“If that had happened in Pittsburgh or Philly, that would have been huge. “It’s already massive enough,” he added of the scale of the problem.

Voters who come to the polls after 8 p.m. will cast their votes via provisional ballot, according to the Pennsylvania Secretary of State's Office.

Rager said he didn't know how much the problems would slow election results in Cambria County. However, he said: “Tonight people will see results within reason.”

Still, in accordance with state law, the county is not allowed to begin counting ballots until 8:01 p.m. ET, Rager said.

“There are 3,000 counties in America, why did it have to be this one?” a local could be heard muttering outside the Cambria County Courthouse.

The voting difficulties in Pennsylvania are particularly notable because the Keystone State has the most votes of any swing state in play on Election Day.

Trump has a 0.6 percentage point lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in the latest RealClearPolitics multi-candidate poll aggregate. The 45th president flipped the state in 2016 but lost it in 2020.