Tempers flare in Chester County as investigators detail causes of pollbook error
Roughly 100 voters and election workers filled the tiered seating of the wood-paneled courtroom on the top floor of Chester County’s Judicial Center Tuesday night to hear how the county had misprinted its pollbooks last November, and to express their frustration at county officials for the debacle.
Two lawyers from West Chester-based law firm Fleck Eckert Klein McGarry LLC, which the county had hired to investigate the episode, sat at the prosecutor’s table and delivered their findings to the general public seated on their left and the county commissioners on their right.
On Nov. 4, 2025, pollbooks used to check voters in at polling places didn’t include the names of Chester County’s more than 75,000 unaffiliated and third-party voters. Those voters had to either wait for supplemental pollbooks to be delivered or use a provisional ballot, an option used when there is some question about a voter’s eligibility. The error forced about 12,600 voters in the county to cast provisional ballots, or roughly 6.4% of the county electorate — more than in any other recent election. Almost all of those ballots were eventually counted.
At the nearly three-hour meeting, the public learned more about the precise nature of the failure, as well as how the county planned to prevent the issue from happening again.
https://www.votebeat.org/pennsylvania/2026/02/05/chester-county-pollbook-problem-2025-election-board-meeting-karen-barsoum/