PA Secretary of State Al Schmidt talks voting issues in Chester, Dauphin counties

Despite voters experiencing difficulties in Chester and Dauphin counties on Election Day, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said Tuesday night that the commonwealth’s election was “safe and secure.”

Reports emerged early Tuesday that unaffiliated and third-party voters were not included in Chester County’s pollbooks, prompting local election officials to use provisional ballots to record their votes. 

Schmidt provided more details on the issue during an election night press conference, adding that the Department of State had helped the county prepare supplemental pollbooks to remedy the issue. 

“Earlier this morning, Chester County officials informed the department staff that its poll books did not include the names of county voters registered with third parties or unaffiliated voters,” Schmidt said. “Members of our department helped county officials create supplemental pollbooks that included the list of county voters whose names had been earlier omitted, and the county then delivered those to all polling places in the county for use.”

Schmidt said the pollbook problems likely occurred due when Chester County performed a pollbook extract.

“It appears that when Chester County did what’s called a pollbook extract … that extract only included voters who are registered in the major parties, meaning voters who are registered Democratic and voters who are registered Republican – and did not include anyone else,” he said.

As a result, a court ordered that Chester County polling places remain open until 10 p.m.

Schmidt said that voting was also temporarily disrupted in Dauphin County due to a bomb threat targeting Paxtonia Elementary School, which served as a polling place on Tuesday. 

“Our department immediately reached out to the election director of Dauphin County. Our understanding was that it prevented voting from taking place for approximately 20 minutes, and approximately 20 voters were turned away during that time, and then the polling place was reopened.”

Schmidt said the bomb threat did not appear to be connected to Tuesday’s election. 

In what could be seen as a dry run for their approach to contesting the 2026 midterm election results, prominent conservative voices expressed outrage over the pollbook issues in Chester County. Scott Presler, the founder of Early Vote Action, an organization dedicated to registering Republican voters, said of the pollbook issues in Chester County: “One of the biggest scandals in Pennsylvania history is happening right now.” 

“Chester County polling locations are running out of provisional ballots and voters are being turned away. This needs to be nationwide news. Red Alert,” he wrote in a social media post.

Jack Posobiec, a conservative podcaster who was reported to have voted in Pennsylvania elections while living in Maryland, also commented on isolated Election Day issues in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in a post on X: “We are seeing a coordinated attack to suppress Election Day voting,” he wrote.