The Pennsylvania Department of State will be approving the processing of mail-in ballot applications provided to voters by third parties but technically incomplete.

The county has received hundreds of mail-in ballot applications that have a printed name and address and the voter filled out the rest of the form.

However, the portion where a person who assisted with the completion of the form should be signed was left blank, leaving the application in limbo.

“Those applications have been approved by the Department of State for us,” Elections Director Lisa Rivett said during Wednesday’s county Board of Elections meeting.

Rivett said that there will be some duplicates where people had already applied back in the spring for the primary and would have had their general election ballot sent to them automatically.

She said people call when she declines the duplicates and has to explain the process each time.

Commissioner Tricia Durbin said the ability to find duplicates is a “security feature” and a “nice internal control to manage that.”

Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said he received one of the applications and it came from the Center for Voter Information.

Rivett said those applications were sent to people who are deceased and other who no longer live here because the outside entity did not have an updated voter list from the Department of State.

Ballot question approved

The Board of Elections also signed off on a plain English statement and ballot question for a referendum in Pine Grove Township.

That referendum is at the behest of Cable Hollow Golf Course and seeks to move Pine Grove Township from wet to dry for liquor license purposes. The township has been dry since 1935, according to the plain English statement.

The question will ask whether an individual supports the granting of liquor licenses in the township.