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Although the final tally doesn't come until the end of the day, voter turnout for Tuesday's municipal election at midday was slow, according to Forrest Lehman, director of the county's Office of Voter Services.
"We never hear a lot of feedback directly. Judges might make offhand comments about whether there was a line first thing in the morning but you know, we don't specifically ask them how many people have you had in there yet," Lehman said.
"I was out to a few precincts and then we always go kind of by the call volume, but our general impression right now is that it's a slow day so far," he added.
Historically voter turnout for municipal elections is much less than in presidential election years like the one coming up in 2024.
In 2019's municipal election, 25,902 votes were cast in Lycoming County. In the 2021 election that number had decreased to 22,901.
"I wouldn't want to venture an estimate without looking at what's on my own website, but my sense is that it feels like it might actually be a little slower than that," Lehman said.
"There's the overall turnout but then you also have to look at what turnout's like in individual areas, because you can always have high turnout in some areas, if it's the right combination of contests, candidates and issues. Whereas in other areas, it could be a little lower. If it's perceived that maybe there's not really anything contested on the ballot, and that's where you get your averages, you know, some are gonna be higher, some are gonna be lower," he explained.
As the county has begun working through finding polling places that meet Americans with Disability Act guidelines, Tuesday's election was the first time some county residents voted at a different site. Voter Services had placed signs at the old polling places as well as posting a media release on their website listing the changes and sending notices to voters' homes to make them aware of the changes. They were also available to answer any questions on the phone.
"We anticipated as with any polling place change, some people go to the wrong place and need to be redirected," Lehman said.
"The county thought it was important to bring some of these changes online now before the presidential year, because it would give more of an opportunity for people to basically experience the change and know where they're going to be next year," he added.
Based on past years at about 8:45 p.m. the reporting of the results starts happening when the first precincts start coming in and the numbers are posted on the board, Lehman said.
"Usually our election night operation is wrapping up somewhere between 10:30 and 11 p.m.. We have all 81 precincts reporting in during that time frame, so there's a lot of activity there's a lot to do," Lehman said.
"You know that history is not always a good guide for the future, so we never know if it might take a little longer this time or it goes even more quickly. But that kind of 8:45 to 10:30 time frame is when results are generally going up on the board," he said.
Results are posted at polling places by poll workers before they leave for the night, unless someone takes the paper down or the wind blows it away.
"At some places it might be possible to post it inside, so it's viewable through glass. But in a lot of places that's not possible and it just has to be posted outside so it could be removed, the wind could blow it away. You know things could happen but otherwise it would be there or the facility might take it down," Lehman said.
Although people can check the results for their area at the polling site, the results for the county are posted on the county's website. Statewide results are on the PA Department of State's website.
"For local contests, the county website is the best place to go," Lehman said.
"Because our election night results will have all of our in-person votes, probably 95 to 99% of the mail ballot results. The only thing that will be left after the election will be the military and overseas provisional ballots to add into that and then also to just go over all the precinct ballot inventories and make sure they were correct as well," he said.
Mail-in ballot numbers are up a little from the primary at around 4,000 -- compared to about 3,000 earlier this year, Lehman said.
"It changes every year sort of in response to where we're at in the election cycle. So in the primary, we had the fewest mail ballots we've seen since Act 77, which doesn't surprise me because a municipal primary is always going to be a slower election. That number is up a little bit this time," he said.
The numbers were not final until 8 p.m. Tuesday, the cut-off time for people to bring ballots into the Voter Services office.
"We also have afternoon mails going to come in so we'll get that and the postmaster for Williamsport usually does a final run through the facilities in the county to make sure that USPS found and delivered all the mail ballots that are in the mail stream here in the county," Lehman said.
"So the post office will personally come through and deliver anything that they find that might be outstanding in their facility," he said.