(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – Chester County, Pa., election workers process mail-in and absentee ballots at West Chester University in West Chester, Pa., Nov. 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Harrisburg, PA) Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt reminded Pennsylvanians today that the deadline to register to vote in the November 3rd midterm election is just less than two weeks away.
That deadline is October 19th.
Eligible voters in Pennsylvania will have the opportunity to cast the ballot for their U.S. House of Representatives seat, Governor/Lieutenant Governor, even-numbered state Senate districts, and all state House districts.
The Pennsylvania Department of State’s candidate database lists the candidates that are running for office to be eligible to vote in the November 3rd election.
A person is eligible to vote in Pennsylvania by being a U.S. citizen for at least one month before the primary, a resident of the election district in which the person plans to register for at least 30 days before the primary, and at least 18 years old on or before November 3rd.
Pennsylvanians who are already registered to vote can check their registration status online by clicking here.
They can also update their voter record with any address, name or party affiliation changes (click here for more information).
Eligible Pennsylvanians also can get a voter registration application at these following locations below, which is where there are more reminders about voting and deadlines, according to a release from the Pennsylvania Department of State:
- their county voter registration office,
- county assistance offices,
- Women, Infants & Children (WIC) program offices,
- Armed Forces recruitment centers,
- county clerk of orphans’ courts or marriage license offices,
- area agencies on aging,
- county mental health and intellectual disabilities offices,
- student disability services offices of the State System of Higher Education, and
- Americans with Disabilities Act-mandated complementary paratransit providers.
Schmidt noted that voters that are registered can request a mail ballot (click here to learn more) and vote from their home or their county elections office, or they can vote at the polls on Election Day. Mail ballot applications must be received by county elections offices by 5 p.m. on October 27th.
The deadline for the county elections offices to receive mail ballots that are completed is 8 p.m. on Election Day, November 3rd. Mail ballots that are received after that time will not be counted.
Pennsylvanians that prefer to vote in person can find their polling place at vote.pa.gov (click here to learn more). The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and any voter that is in in line by 8 p.m. will be allowed to vote.
The Department of State’s voter information website, vote.pa.gov (click here to learn more), is available in English, Spanish, and Chinese and it offers a polling place locator (click here to learn more) and contact information for county elections offices, and also includes tips for first-time voters (click here to learn more), mail-in and absentee voters (click here to learn more), elderly and disabled voters (click here to learn more), and members of the military (click here to learn more).
The public can also access weekly voter registration statistics (click here to learn more), historical election data (click here to learn more), annual voter registration reports (click here to learn more), election directives and guidance (click here to learn more), and other resources for election administration on the Department of State’s website. You can learn more about annual voter list maintenance by visiting the Department’s Fact-Checking Pennsylvania-Related Election Claims page (click here to learn more).