Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry The Vote Here sign welcomes voters from the Warren West and Warren South areas Tuesday to cast their ballots at the Salvation Army in Warren. Just when those signs will go up for the 2024 presidential primary remains unclear.

Both the state House and Senate have approved bills that would move up the date of Pennsylvania’s 2024 presidential primary.

But they didn’t sign off on the same date.

The Senate’s date is March 19. The House rejected that bill and approved a bill to move the date to April 2.

The underlying issue is the perception that Pennsylvania’s position in the primary timeline is largely too late to have a say in who the nominees are. Yet, as 2020 proved, Pennsylvania proved absolutely critical in the general election.

As the feud continues in Harrisburg, county officials want an answer.

And now.

“We need to know right now,” Warren County Elections Director Krystle Ransom said.

She said her concern is potential supply chain issues.

“We’ve ordered extra,” she said. “We’ve done all we can as a county to prepare” regardless of when the date is.

The county has already sent letters to all of the polling locations to ensure availability for the prospective dates.

Ransom said she’s not aware of any conflicts at this point.

Senate Bill 224 aimed to move the date back to March 19 — from the fourth Tuesday of April to the third Tuesday of March. The change as detailed in that legislation would only impact presidential primaries.

It passed the Senate last month 45-2 with Sen. Scott Hutchinson one of the two “no” votes.

It failed in the House 26-177 on Oct. 5 with Rep. Kathy Rapp also voting in opposition.

The real drama in the House, though, played out late the night before on Oct. 4 in the Appropriations Committee.

An amendment to SB 224 was proposed after 11 p.m. that, per discussion in the committee meetings, would have created a permanent mail-in voting list, among other changes.

Currently, voters have to ask for mail-in ballots each year.

Rapp was critical of both that change as well as the late hour where it was discussed.

She said in her newsletter that the change “would have sent county election offices into chaos and do nothing to restore faith and confidence in our election system.”

Rapp said the mail-in ballot provision would have resulted in voters having “to jump through significant hoops to actually cast a ballot in person. Such an action further erodes the security and integrity of our elections.”

“Our elections are far too important for substantial changes to be made to legislation under the cover of darkness, near the midnight hour,” she said.

The House then passed a “clean” bill that would change the primary date to April 2, which passed the House on party lines 102-100.

According to a Friday Associated Press article, the state-wide County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania has taken the position that it’s too late to move the primary up at this stage.

“While we thank the General Assembly and the administration for their thoughtful discussions around this matter, at this date counties can no longer guarantee there will be sufficient time to make the changes necessary to assure a primary on a different date would be successful,” the organization’s executive director, Lisa Schaefer, wrote in the letter dated Friday, according to the AP.

Citing the letter, that report outlines a myriad of concerns with changing the date ranging from polling place conflicts, to scheduling pollworkers to adding another “layer of controversy” on the 2024 election.