This year’s primaries on Tuesday brought the relative quiet of municipal elections compared to the hoopla of the 2024 presidential election cycle.
In November’s general election, more than 110,000 people combined voted in Cambria and Somerset counties with races for president, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Pennsylvania General Assembly and state row offices taking place.
This spring, with state judge, local government and area school board contests occurring, approximately 19,000 people voted in Cambria and 10,000 in Somerset.
“Honestly, it was pretty much what we had expected,” Somerset County Director of Voter Registration and Elections Tina Pritts said.
Pritts said that despite the lower volume “as far as the procedures that we do and the tasks that we have to complete, they’re all the same.”
“As far as the turnout, last year with the presidential obviously, there was a lot more information from the candidates being sent to the voters via television, via social media, via mail, compared to this year where you won’t see that during a municipal election,” Pritts said.
Approximately 24% of registered voters participated in Somerset.
Cambria’s turnout was just under 23%.
Nicole Burkhardt, Cambria County Election Office’s new director, said that was “about what I expected.”
Cambria ballot errors
Cambria needed to address an issue in which Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania candidates Josh Prince and Matthew Wolford were listed in an incorrect order on some Republican Party ballots. More than 1,500 GOP primary ballots were returned, with the “bulk of them” being the ballots with errors, according to Burkhardt.
County officials knew which ballots were proper and which ones had the mistake.
The incorrect ballots were taken aside. Two-person bipartisan teams then remade new ballots – transferring information from incorrect ballots to ones that had Prince and Wolford listed in the proper spots – so they could be scanned.
“The goal is zero errors,” Burkhardt said.
“We did put in precautions and the precautions caught the errors. By catching them, even though there was a mistake, we were able to fix it and know exactly what we were doing ahead of time to fix it, which made things run so much smoother.”
