Pennsylvania court orders Erie County remedies for nearly 20,000 missing absentee ballots

A Pennsylvania court ordered the Erie County Board of Elections on Friday to offer new absentee ballots to nearly 20,000 voters who didn’t receive them and stay open for longer office hours until Election Day to receive them.

Court of Common Pleas Judge David Ridge ordered the remedy after holding a hearing Thursday about problems the election office and its vendor, ElectionIQ, had in delivering ballots through the U.S. Postal Service.

The number of missing ballots in just one county of the key battleground state is potentially significant. Former President Donald Trump won the state by about 40,000 votes in 2016 and President Joe Biden won it by about 80,000 votes in 2020.

The vendor couldn’t confirm the status of 13,000 to 17,000 absentee ballots that were requested before the deadline, Ridge wrote.

In addition, 1,200 county residents who requested ballots from being temporarily out of state said they hadn’t received ballots, Ridge wrote.

And 365 duplicate ballots were sent to voters with barcodes that matched different voters, Ridge wrote.

To remedy the problem, the Court of Common Pleas in Erie ordered the elections office in the county courthouse to:

• Stay open longer on Friday and Monday, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

• Provide the voters with missing ballots new ones that could be returned to the office or a drop box there.

• Send new ballots to out-of-state voters by overnight mail.

Rick Hasen, a law professor at University of California Los Angeles and tracks election law, said the judge's order "seems sensible" at first glance.

Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who works on election lawsuits, called the judge's decision "a key victory for the voters of Erie County."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pennsylvania judge orders fixes for missing absentee ballots