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Allegheny County election officials debate future of ballot drop boxes, satellite voting centers | TribLIVE.com
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Allegheny County election officials debate future of ballot drop boxes, satellite voting centers

Ryan Deto
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A voter submits a ballot in an official drop box during early voting in Athens, Ga., on Oct. 19, 2020.

Allegheny County took several steps to address high voter turnout anticipated in the 2020 election, launching mail-in ballot information campaigns, satellite voting offices and ballot drop boxes, but those methods haven’t been brought back.

At Wednesday’s Allegheny County Election Board meeting in Downtown Pittsburgh, Department of Administrative Services Director Jessica Garofolo said the county doesn’t have any plans to use satellite voting centers or drop boxes in upcoming elections because of the costs.

The election department is already running at a deficit, she said.

“When you look at the overall cost of it, I don’t know if it is worth the return,” Garofolo said.

Allegheny County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam, D-North Side, questioned the decision.

“We set a really cool precedent in 2020, and I would like to see it again,” Hallam said.

Hallam acknowledged the difficulties of running satellite offices, but pressed election officials why the county hasn’t implemented drop boxes, which don’t require constant staff to run.

“I don’t understand why we implemented something amazing and took it away from (voters),” she said.

Election Department Director David Voye said drop boxes and satellite offices only accounted for a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that the county received, and the costs needed to run them doesn’t justify that low-level of use.

“It is not a process I would prefer to use again. Maybe in a presidential election,” Voye said, noting the increased turnout in presidential election years.

Garofolo said Act 77, the law that brought mail-in voting to Pennsylvania, has finally started providing Allegheny County with funding to help pay for additional election services, but only enough to help the county pay down its deficit and to add call center staff.

In this year’s primary, poll workers encountered problems with equipment and there weren’t enough call center workers to help them resolve issues in a timely manner.

Garofolo added that inflation has made running elections more expensive and there isn’t enough funding to expand with satellite offices and drop boxes.

Hallam didn’t appear to have support to bring them back from the two other election board members. Allegheny County Councilman Sam DeMarco, R-North Fayette, said he opposed installing drop boxes. And Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, a Democrat, agreed with Voye and said the costs were too high for the use they receive.

Fitzgerald said that voters can already drop off mail-in ballots at mail boxes. After an exchange with Hallam over the price voters would spend on gas to travel to drop boxes versus the cost of postage, the argument was dropped.

“We are just going to disagree,” Fitzgerald said to Hallam. “I believe we have a system that works.”

Ryan Deto is a TribLive reporter covering politics, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County news. A native of California’s Bay Area, he joined the Trib in 2022 after spending more than six years covering Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh City Paper, including serving as managing editor. He can be reached at rdeto@triblive.com.

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