📬Mail Ballot Tracker

Requests and returns come from the Pennsylvania Department of State's Statewide Mail-Ballot File, the state's own record of every mail-ballot application, which it cuts from the voter registration system once each business day and which carries each voter's precinct and registered party. The count is voters with an approved application whose ballot has not been cancelled, so a voter whose ballot was cancelled and reissued counts once. Return figures appear once the county has at least 200 returned ballots on record. Two other counts of the same thing are read every run and shown below under "Why other counts differ": VoteBuilder's mail-ballot records (through DNC Phoenix, the Democratic data warehouse) and the MCDC "G26 MIB Tracker" sheet that Olivia Quinci fills by hand from VoteBuilder. If the state file stops arriving for a week, VoteBuilder takes over as the source, then the sheet. If a feed stops updating, the "as of" line at the top goes stale and a warning appears.

Why other counts differ.

Benchmarks. Mail ballot totals are the county's official per-precinct results (Montgomery County GIS election archive, "Times Cast" mail-in column, split ballot styles summed): 116,958 in the 2022 general and 174,409 in 2024, matching the county's summary reports and, for 2024, OpenElections on every precinct. Two precincts created after 2024 (Upper Dublin 3-3 and 6-3) did not exist in those elections and show no benchmark. Party splits (D / R / unaffiliated) come from the Pennsylvania voter file (vintage ) by the voter's current registration and are shares, not official counts; voters who have since left the rolls are not in them.

Party columns ("D vs 22", "R vs 22", "I vs 22"). A precinct's 2022 Democratic mail benchmark is its official 2022 mail total multiplied by the Democratic share of that precinct's voter-file mail history (same for R and I). "R vs 22" ranks highest-first because a Republican request rate far above the county's is the warning sign to watch, while D and I rank lowest-first because those are the ones to lift. Republican 2022 mail totals were small everywhere, so R percentages run high by construction.

Requests section (public state file). The Pennsylvania Department of State publishes one row per mail ballot application for every election since 2020 (data.pa.gov, "General Election Mail Ballot Requests"), extracted from the SURE registration database once a day, with county, party, application, mailing-label and return dates, and the voter's congressional, state senate and state house district, but no precinct. This page reads the Montgomery County rows for 2022 and 2024 (final files) and the live 2026 file and lines them up by days before Election Day. Most of each year's count is annual-list voters whose applications carry January dates, which is why the lines start high and why "new requests since July" is shown separately. The 2022 and 2024 lines are rebuilt from final files by application date, the closest available comparison rather than a replay of what was known that day. Declined applications are excluded; cancelled ballots stay in, because the request happened. Party is the party on the application, with the state's Other/Independent bucket shown as "I" and minor parties in the total only. "Ballot label recorded" is the date the county queued a mailing label, which happens before the first mailing.

Districts. Precincts are assigned to the congressional, state senate, and state house district holding the majority of their voters; three precincts (Horsham 4-1, Lower Merion 11-3, Upper Dublin 2-1) are split and shown under their majority district.

Reading the "vs 2022" column. A request is not a returned ballot. Requests as a share of 2022's final cast count tells you whether a precinct is on track to match its 2022 mail volume; the return rate (once returns begin posting after ballots mail on ~9/18) tells you whether requested ballots are actually coming back. The second number is the one that turns into a canvassing target, and the "Rank by" control switches to it when it becomes available.

"Needed" is how many more requests a precinct would need for its share of its 2022 mail total to equal the county's. It is a way of sizing the gap, not a quota. The Requests section compares with the same day in 2022 or 2024; the precinct and municipality tables compare with each year's final mail total.

Downloads. Each table's "Download CSV" button saves the rows for the current Show, Rank by and search choices, every column included, as plain numbers (percentages without the % sign). The files open directly in Excel or Google Sheets.

Party columns. Party is the voter's registered party on the voter file. "I" is everyone who is not a Democrat, a Republican, or a minor-party registrant (no affiliation, no party, independent, other); minor parties are included in Total only, so D + I + R runs a few ballots short of Total. A few dozen people whose precinct on file is not a current Montgomery County precinct are counted in the county total but appear in no precinct row.

All figures are precinct-level aggregates. No individual voter data is published.

Sept 25, 2026, late. The Requests and Returns charts now come in pairs: a Democratic chart on top and a second chart below it with a Republicans / Unaffiliated / All parties switch (Republicans by default), sharing the Show and Whole cycle / Close-up controls. The three request tiles show Democrats and Republicans side by side with the all-party figure underneath. Prompted by a question on the committee thread: the all-party figure (98% of 2022 on the same day) hides that the two parties sit on opposite sides of it, Republicans well above their 2022 count and Democrats below. This year's line takes the party's colour; the 2022 and 2024 lines stay gray. The charts are shorter so a pair fits one screen, and the returns-at-fixed-days table moved out of the chart card into its own, collapsed by default, with all four party columns at once. A note under the Requests charts says why the parties sit on opposite sides of 2022. It comes from matching the Sept 25 state mail-ballot file to the Sept 7 voter file's mail-vote history: 38% of Republican requesters voted by mail in 2024 but not in 2022 (18% of Democrats), which is more than the whole Republican gain over 2022; Democrats and Republicans who voted by mail in both 2022 and 2024 have re-requested at nearly the same rate (75% and 73%); and new applications logged since early July are at 41% of the 2022 pace for Democrats against 79% for Republicans. The annual list is renewed by a form the county mails each February, so a 2024 request does not carry into 2026 on its own. The note is fixed copy dated to that check, not recomputed daily.

Sept 25, 2026. Returns have started (the first 520 were logged on Sept 23), so the Pace section has a new Returns card. It lines each year up on the day the county mailed most of its ballots rather than on days before Election Day, because the mailing came at very different points (45 days out this year, 42 in 2024, 28 in 2022), and it shows returns as a share of ballots mailed, with a table at fixed days after mailing. The pace chart has a close-up view (two weeks either side of the newest file, with the axis fitted to the data) and a full-screen button. The Measure menu on the pace chart was removed (it charted returns against days before Election Day, which misleads when the mailing dates differ this much), as was the duplicate request-total tile in the Pace section; the county Requested tile now compares with 2022 on the same day and the Returned tile with ballots mailed. The day-by-day county chart was removed: the pace chart shows the same totals against 2022 and 2024 on the same day, and the Returns card covers returns. The state file for Sept 24 was posted after the morning refresh and has been added. The precinct table keeps ranking by requests until 15% of ballots are back, since at 1% nearly every precinct's return rate is near zero. Maintenance checks that are not a data problem, such as a precinct losing a few requests when ballots come back undeliverable, no longer appear as red banners on this page. Later the same day, after a review of the page for repeated information: the Returns card became its own section with a jump link, the reconciliation card moved into this methodology block as "Why other counts differ", the party bars and the Returns and Districts cards got plain titles, the Requested tile now compares with 2022's final mail total (the same comparison the precinct tables use) instead of a same-day figure computed from the public file, and "pace" is reserved for the same-day comparison. Then, on a second look: the Pace section is now called Requests, since the Returns section below it makes the same comparison for returns; the districts, precinct and municipality tables open at six rows with the rest faded behind a "Show all" button, so the page is shorter to scroll past; and each of those tables has a Download CSV button.

Sept 19, 2026. A companion page, Who is requesting, answers a question raised on the Area 4 committee thread: which age groups have requested a mail ballot, by party, relative to how many are registered, and how requests have moved against registration since June. Request rates by age band (18-34, 35-49, 50-64, 65+) for the county, each district, each municipality and each precinct, with the same-point 2022 and 2024 age mix for the county and districts, a precinct table ranked by the under-50 request rate, and a registration-versus-requests table built from three cuts of the state voter file, and a women / men toggle. Ages come from birth month and year in the state file, gender from the voter file; counts under 10 are hidden. Both pages now carry a note under the header explaining that 2026 is a midterm like 2022 and that 2024, a presidential year, is a ceiling rather than a target.

Sept 18, 2026. The daily refresh now runs around 11 AM ET, right after the state posts its file (the first run was scheduled for the afternoon on a misread of the state's posting time), and the header shows the exact refresh time in Eastern Time. The returns note now says when to expect the first returns instead of just the mailing date.

Sept 17, 2026, evening. The precinct and county figures now come from the state's own mail-ballot file. The Department of State furnishes its Statewide Mail-Ballot File, with each applicant's precinct and party, to any registered voter who signs an affirmation limiting it to political use, and the county committee's request was approved the same afternoon. This is the source VoteBuilder itself loads a day or two later, so the page no longer depends on the party's data warehouse and gets return figures from the same file. The county total moved from 91,483 to 90,357: VoteBuilder keeps a few thousand requesters who are not yet matched to its voter file and lags the state by a day. The VoteBuilder count is now the second column on the reconciliation card, with the MCDC sheet and the public copy of the state file beside it. Nothing is published below the precinct level.

Sept 17, 2026. The precinct and county figures now come straight from VoteBuilder's mail-ballot records, read each morning through the party's data warehouse (DNC Phoenix), instead of the MCDC sheet that was filled in by hand once a day for the county and once a week for precincts. Two visible effects. Precinct and municipality numbers now change every weekday rather than every Friday, and the "change since" column compares against the previous Friday. And the county total stepped up by about 5,700 (from 85,818 to 91,483) because the direct read counts every person with a live request while the sheet's VoteBuilder search applied the standard exclusions for deceased and moved voters; the new figure sits within a day of the state's own file. The MCDC sheet has not gone away: its total is now the third column on the reconciliation card, and the page falls back to it automatically if the direct feed stops.

Sept 12, 2026. Added a second source and a new "Pace" section. Until now every number came from the MCDC tracker sheet, which is copied by hand out of VoteBuilder. The page now also reads the Pennsylvania Department of State's own mail-ballot application file, which the state publishes every day and which reaches back to 2022 and 2024. That made three things possible: comparing this year with the same number of days before Election Day in 2022 and 2024 (instead of only against each year's final total), separating requests already on the books in January (the annual mail-ballot list) from new requests made since July, and showing the state's count next to the VoteBuilder count so the difference between them is visible rather than a matter of memory. The state file has no precinct column, so precincts still come from the MCDC sheet. Same day: the county's official 2022 and 2024 mail-ballot totals replaced an earlier estimate built from the voter file, which had run about 14% low and overstated the county's pace (85% became 73%). Republican columns were switched from "how far along" coloring to a watch signal, since a Republican request rate far above the county's is the thing to notice. Congressional, state senate, and state house scopes were added at Jason Salus's request. Late that evening we reproduced how the tracker sheet's VoteBuilder count is made (people, with VoteBuilder's standard exclusions for deceased and moved voters), which accounts for a bit over half of its gap to the state file.

Sept 11, 2026. First version, built the evening the MCDC tracker sheet was shared: county pace, party bars, a furthest-behind list, and a sortable precinct table, refreshed twice a day from the sheet.