As voters across Western Pennsylvania continue to head to the polls Tuesday afternoon to shape their governments and judiciaries in another high-stakes election, Allegheny County officials say they’re off to a smooth start with very minor difficulties and are hard at work processing mail-in ballots in their warehouse.
Polls opened at 7 a.m. and will stay open until 8 p.m. At the county’s massive election warehouse on the North Side, sworn-in officials began to extract and scan the thousands of mail-in ballots that have been returned by voters so far.
Watching the process, the county said at 11:30 a.m., were four authorized representatives, two for Democratic stakeholders and two for Republicans.
County officials said they ran into a few hiccups this morning at a few polling places, but all have been addressed, including:
• There was no power at Pittsburgh polling place 19-13 this morning until about 8:50 a.m., when “a generator and lights arrived … allowing voting to move into the building,” the county said.
• At Pittsburgh polling place 25-01, officials had a delayed opening — 20 minutes late — due to a “miscommunication related to access to the building,” the county said. All is well now.
• At Pittsburgh 29-03, Pittsburgh 26-10 and Baldwin 5, there were judges who either slept in or didn’t show for their duties. The polls were open on time, the county said, but “materials arrived late or are being secured now.”
If you want to vote today, it’s easy. And remember: if you’re in line at 8 p.m., you are legally permitted to vote still, so don’t leave.
You can check your voter registration status here: Check Your Voter Registration Status (pa.gov).
You can then find your polling place by plugging your address into this tool: Polling Place Information (pa.gov). Here is a full list of polling places if you’d rather not type in your address: https://www.alleghenycounty.us/uploadedFiles/Allegheny_Home/Dept-Content/Elections/Docs/November%202023%20General%20Polling%20Place%20Master%20List.xlsx
Before you go, you might want to take a look at a sample ballot to make sure you’re prepared. Do that here: Sample Ballots | Elections | Allegheny County. We also recommend this detailed video from Allegheny County about what to expect at the polls: What to Expect on Election Day.
At this point, if you want to vote by mail, the deadline has passed to apply for an absentee or mail-in ballot for this election. But if you’ve already got one in hand and haven’t yet returned it, you need to get it to Allegheny County by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
The county said Monday that about 107,000 mail-in ballots had been successfully returned for this election — about 84,000 of them by registered Democrats. The county approved about 141,000 mail-in ballot applications.
This story is being updated.
Julian is the Western Pennsylvania politics and government bureau chief at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike.