EBENSBURG, Pennsylvania — 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 by hand in the critical swing state.
The ballots were printed improperly by William Penn Printing and could not be scanned properly by election machines, Commissioner Keith Rager told The Post.
Officials said all votes will still be counted — but poll results in the county of 133,000 will likely be delayed on Tuesday night.
A judge also agreed to keep polls open an extra two hours in the county, until 10 p.m., to make up for the problems.
Rager said thousands of freshly printed ballots, which do work in the voting machines, were rushed from Pittsburgh, about 70 miles away, to polling sites across the county.
Shortly after 1:15 p.m. ET, officials began distributing a batch of “good” ballots that didn’t have the printing issues to polling sites.
“I want people in our county to know that we’re doing everything we can. This was thrown at us at 7 o’clock this morning,” Rager told The Post.
“Everything’s secured.”
Cambria County went for former President Donald Trump by about 68% in 2020.
Officials got reports shortly after polls opened at 7 a.m. that election machines weren’t scanning the ballots, according to Rager.
“Initially, we had thought that it was a software issue, and we were attempting to correct. Upon further investigation, we found that there was an issue with the ballots not being able to be scanned into the system,” Alex Ashcom, Cambria County’s chief clerk told The Post.
“In response to this, we issued directives to all of the other polling precincts to still take ballots, still keep people voting, and to collect them and count them by hand, rather than by using the machine as a backup.”
The county’s officials had scrambled to hustle a new shipment of about 35,000 “good” ballots that could be read by election machines into precincts throughout the county.
“Nobody is throwing ballots out,” Rager said.
“Starting tomorrow we are going to find out who is responsible,” he added of the ballot printing snafu while stressing that the immediate focus Tuesday is keeping things running as smoothly as possible.
William Penn Printing did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
“If this happened in Pittsburgh or Philly, this would have been massive. It’s massive enough already,” he added about the scope of the problem.
Voters who arrive at 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 badly the problems would slow the Cambria County election results. However, he said, “within reason tonight, people will see results.”
Still, the county is not allowed to start counting ballots until 8:01 p.m. ET in keeping with state law, Rager said.
“There’s 3,000 counties in America, why did it have to be this one?” one local man was heard muttering outside the Cambria County Courthouse.
Ballot troubles in Pennsylvania are particularly noteworthy given that the Keystone State has the largest number of electoral votes of the swing states in play on Election Day.
Trump has a 0.6 percentage point edge over Vice President Kamala Harris in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of multi-candidate polling. The 45th president had flipped the state in 2016 but lost it in 2020.
