Luzerne County provides statistic on voided general election ballots

In last week’s Nov. 3 general election, 1,393 Luzerne County polling place ballots were voided, which could occur for a variety of reasons, including voters making a mistake on their initial ballot, officials said. Before 2026, voters made their selections on electronic ballot-marking devices that automatically prevented them from choosing more than the allowable number of candidates, known as overvoting, or scribbling on the ballot, called an extraneous mark. Those built-in restrictions are no longer in place because the county changed to hand-marked paper ballots this year as part of its switch to new leased voting equipment from Hart InterCivic. Instead, the new system’s tabulator displays messages on a screen alerting voters of overvotes and extraneous marks when they feed their ballot into the tabulator. Voters in this situation have the option to ask a poll worker for a new ballot.

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