PHILADELPHIA - Pennsylvania held a primary election Tuesday amid civil unrest, a pandemic, the introduction of new voting machines in some counties and the debut of mail-in balloting that pushed county election bureaus to their limits.
Voters in some places were dealing with late-arriving mail-in ballots and a dramatic consolidation of polling places in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to cope with the difficulty of recruiting poll workers fearful of the coronavirus.
Officials in Philadelphia and its suburbs, in particular, were concerned that voters wouldn’t receive their ballots in time for the post office to return them by Tuesday’s 8 p.m.