PHOTO PROVIDED The Clinton County Board of Commissioners, from left, Angela Harding, Jim Russo and Jeff Snyder, and Deputy Chief Clerk Jasmin Mills are pictured during the board’s work session on Monday morning.

LOCK HAVEN — Two election grants will be up for consideration at this week’s voting session for the Clinton County Board of Commissioners.

The board heard from Voter Registrar Maria Boileau about each at its work session on Monday morning.

The first is the annual Election Integrity Grant which would see the county potentially receive $116,035.39.

“We use those funds for the payment of our pollworkers, the printing of ballots and security preparation, transportation and storage of our voting apparatus,” Boileau said.

The application for this grant is due on Aug. 15.

The second grant is related to a redesign of envelopes for provisional ballots rolled out by the Department of State last month.

The decision made in early July by Commonwealth election officials will see a redesign of the provisional envelopes which should lead to fewer ballot rejections due to technical errors.

According to information published by Spotlight PA, provisional ballots are meant to be a fail-safe for voters at the polls, to be used when there are questions about eligibility or whether someone has already voted. Each one is placed in a separate envelope, giving election officials a chance to verify that the ballot should be counted before it is added to the tally.

These ballots, however, can be rejected due to technical reasons such as a missing voter signature on the envelope.

Spotlight PA reported the redesign is “meant to make that less likely, and follows a similar redesign of the return envelopes for mail ballots.” Those envelopes were redesigned in 2023.

Though the changes in mail in ballots was required, this change is not, according to Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt.

The department is offering financial assistance as an incentive to buy these envelopes, which the commissioners will consider at its voting session on Thursday.

Boileau told the board the county will apply for $500 in assistance to replace the current envelopes.

“We will probably spend about $750, so this is a nice grant to replace those envelopes,” she said.

She noted this will require the old envelopes be destroyed.

“We have less than a thousand of them and I’ve already boxed them up (and) they’re ready to destroy,” she said.

Commissioner Angela Harding asked if funding from the Election Integrity Grant could possibly be used to cover the remaining $250 for the envelopes.

Boileau said funds from that grant could be used to cover the cost.

In other election news, Board Chair Jim Russo asked Boileau about poll workers. She said her office has a decent number of poll workers that will assist with the November election.

“We’re doing pretty good. We could use a few more — especially in West Keating, South Renovo, Renovo Borough — but we’re really in good shape going into November,” she said.