There were fewer people voting by mail this year in Westmoreland County, compared to the last presidential election.
Westmoreland elections bureau Director Greg McCloskey said more than 55,100 mail-in packets were received from voters as of 8 p.m. Tuesday. There were about 59,500 mail-ins in 2020.
Still, McCloskey said, because of some newer election workers coming on board and the volume of mail-in votes, the county was about an hour behind from where he wanted to be in counting them.
He said he expected to have all the mail-in votes counted before 10 p.m. Tuesday.
While long voter lines and waits of up to two hours occurred at times throughout the day, McCloskey said he hopes to have the total unofficial vote completed before midnight.
He said one precinct remained open for about 10 minutes past the normal 8 p.m. closing time.
“There was one poll that closed their machines and didn’t realize the voter still had a ballot to scan,” McCloskey said, “so they had to reopen the machine just to scan that one ballot.”
