DOYLESTOWN, Pa. – A clumsy and time-consuming early voting option in the nation’s largest ballot measure presidential battleground state Voters filling county offices unprepared to handle the influx is disappointing, leading to hour-long lines and leading to claims of disenfranchisement.

The confusion is partly a result of Pennsylvania legislation passed just before the pandemic and partly a result of the crowds. Republican voters are heeding their party’s calls and former President Donald Trump will vote early. Trump’s calls for his supporters to vote ahead of the Nov. 5 election come after he repeatedly attacked early voting patterns in previous years.

In Bucks County, a Philadelphia suburb often seen as a political bellwether, voters waited up to three hours on Tuesday, the last day to apply for a mail-in ballot.

Why this change from four years ago, when relatively few voters attempted to apply for early voting in person?

“Because he told us to vote early. “I was just trying to make it ‘too big to cheat,'” said Marlene Burns, 52, who repeated one of Trump’s standard lines encouraging his supporters to vote. “So yeah, that’s why I’m voting at the courthouse and I wanted to vote. I’m voting in person.”

Concern about early voting was the beginning of the latest debate Voting in PennsylvaniaIt has, by far, the largest trove of electoral votes of any battleground state. most visited state Based on Democratic and Republican presidential tickets this year. As Election Day approaches in the state, there have been numerous clashes over mail ballots; On the threshold of the US Supreme Court.

The culprit in this latest controversy is a law the Pennsylvania Legislature, then controlled by Republicans, passed in 2019 to expand voting by mail. They created an early voting system very different from that of most states, where registered voters can go to polling places in their counties and vote before Election Day.

Instead, in a practice known as “optional vote-by-mail,” Pennsylvania voters can show up at their county government office, request a vote-by-mail ballot, and then fill out an application. This form must be reviewed and then approved to ensure the person is an eligible voter. Once this happens, a ballot paper needs to be printed.

It’s a process that could take about 12 minutes per voter if all goes well. Voters have the option of filling out and returning their ballot on-site, taking it home, or having it mailed to their home. If they don’t fill out the ballot right away, they can return it through the Postal Service or drop it off at a drop box.

County election officials say they need more funding to hire staff to help with optional early voting and are trying to accommodate the voter surge. Exacerbating the problem is that the offices have only one printer designed specifically for in-person early voting, which includes inner and outer envelopes.

The process and voter demands strained the election offices and upset the voters.

“This is an uncertain process for a lot of people because it’s still relatively new and also inefficient,” Bucks County Board of Elections Chairman Bob Harvie said in an interview. “There are definitely changes that need to be made.”

Responding to criticism and misinformation on social media, Bucks County government said any voter who lines up by 5 p.m. Tuesday can apply for a mail-in ballot. The Secretary of State also issued a statement confirming this and advised voters: “Please be patient.”

Other counties assured early voters they would have a chance to apply for ballots by Tuesday evening’s deadline.

It’s a system voters and officials are still familiar with. The 2020 election was marked by a surge in mail-in votes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 midterm elections did not see the kind of turnout typical in a presidential year.

Harvie said counties need help with staffing and equipment for early voting. He also would like to see a change in state law that would allow voters to check a box where they would receive a mail-in ballot every year if they wanted, rather than having to apply for one every election.

But Pennsylvania’s politically divided state government has been largely deadlocked on modernizing election laws since 2019.

As the early voting period draws to a close, Republican lawmakers said in a letter to Bucks County officials that they had received complaints from voters about the county office closing over the weekend while voters were still in line to apply for mail-in ballots. In a statement posted on its website, Bucks County said it may need to pause application taking “to ensure all applications are processed by the end of the day.”

Harvie acknowledged confusion over the state’s early voting system.

“When you’re told that, yes, you can vote early by someone, then you show up and you’re told, no, you can’t vote early; “You know, voters are not sure about this, who should we believe?” he said.