When the ACLU of Pennsylvania contacted me the week after the election to let me know that my provisional ballot was being challenged, I was stunned. Why would my vote not count? After all, I had been instructed to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day because of Chester County’s colossal pollbook error. So why was the county now holding a hearing to consider not counting my vote?
It was the kind of situation you think can never happen to you. I’m a registered independent voter. I’m also a 50‑year‑old white man, a combat veteran, a married father of three, and a United States citizen. I’m well aware that as long as there have been elections, there have been efforts to disenfranchise voters. I just never imagined that it would be my vote in jeopardy.
So why did I vote by provisional ballot? When I went to vote on Election Day, the poll workers couldn’t find my name in the pollbook. Immediately, I questioned myself. Had I missed an update to my voter registration?
Then one of the poll workers asked me if I was registered as an independent voter. I told her that I was.
She explained that the pollbooks for independent, unaffiliated, and third party voters had not been printed properly.
Discouragement washed over me. I am registered as an independent voter on principle — neither of the two major parties represents my values. And independent, unaffiliated, and third party voters in Chester County make up a significant voting bloc (I would learn later that an estimated 75,000 people had been left off the poll books). Given the deep political disagreements of our day, I couldn’t help but wonder whether partisan tensions had caused this massive error.
I told the poll workers that this mistake needed to be corrected— I consider voting an important civic duty and I wasn’t leaving until my vote was cast. They offered two options: fill out a provisional ballot or come back later once new poll books had been sent over. But I didn’t have time to try again later. After 14 years of voting in Chester County without incident, I cast my first ever provisional ballot.
I was frustrated and felt demoted as a citizen. Still, I was relieved to have been able to cast a ballot despite the county’s error. I went about the rest of my work day believing that my vote would be counted.
Needless to say, when I received the voicemail for the ACLU of Pennsylvania that my provisional ballot had been set aside, I was very frustrated. I returned the ACLU’s call with a barrage of questions. They were professional and nonpartisan — two qualities that independent voters tend to appreciate.
The staffer I spoke with explained that the ACLU of Pennsylvania, in partnership with other nonpartisan voting rights groups, had been observing Chester County’s provisional ballot review (an unprecedented 12,000 provisional ballots had been cast) and were contacting voters whose ballots had been challenged or set aside. It turns out my provisional ballot envelope was missing one of two voter signatures. “Two signatures?” I said. The ACLU staffer explained that a public hearing was scheduled for the following week, where I would have the opportunity to defend my vote.
After we hung up, I pulled up images of provisional ballots online to jog my memory. And there it was: two signatures are, in fact, required. “How did I miss this?” I wondered. My only answer is that amidst the chaos and frustration of the polling station that day, and rushing to get to a work call, I had missed the spot where it said to sign the envelope a second time. From a voter, citizen and combat veteran to the state legislators who wrote this law and the state courts who have interpreted it: mea culpa. I fully admit that I made a paperwork error, but I do not believe that it should be a reason to disqualify my vote. I made a plan to attend the Board of Elections hearing and give public testimony.
The hearing brought its own surprises. I was surprised by all the company I had. The Chester County GOP challenged more than 1,000 provisional ballots from voters who had made various mistakes—everything from not properly sealing the privacy envelope to missing a poll worker signature. I was surprised that the GOP representative delivered a lengthy litany of grievances with the county that had little to do with ensuring that eligible voters had their votes counted in this election. And I was surprised that only the attorneys from the two major parties had standing in the hearing —there were two seats up front and neither were filled with someone representing independent or unaffiliated voters.
When it was time for the board and party attorneys to hear testimony directly from the impacted voters, dozens of Chester County voters like myself expressed their anger that they had been left off the pollbooks, their right to vote was being called into question, and they demanded the board to count their ballot. One voter, who happened to be a registered Republican and who had worked the 2024 election, said she was proud to have seen how conscientiously and carefully the county ran its elections in the past. “The fact that I hear my ballot is being challenged by my party makes me really worried about free and fair elections,” she said. “People work really hard to make their votes count and this is just wrong.” Following this testimony, the Republican Party attorney promptly withdrew the challenge to that category of ballots.
In the end, my vote — and the votes of other eligible, registered independent, unaffiliated, and third party voters left off the pollbooks who had made a mistake— were counted in a two-to-one decision by the Chester County Board of Elections. I’m grateful for that. And I’m especially grateful that I was alerted about the opportunity to defend my right to vote by the ACLU of Pennsylvania. But the lack of recognized protection for independent and unaffiliated voters is unacceptable: an advocate for these voters deserves a seat at Chester County’s hearing table. Throughout my many conversations with the ACLU-PA, they repeated their motto of “Count Every Vote.” From this independent voter’s opinion, this could not have rung more true.
Colin Kelly is a registered voter in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
