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A Pennsylvania county election office that was already facing criticism for a 2025 election snafu and an alleged hostile work environment is dealing with another error.
Roughly 145,000 mail ballot applications sent out in Chester County this week for the 2026 elections were printed with the first and last names of voters reversed, according to the county. However, the applications can still be used as they are, the county and state said.
The error comes three months after the county misprinted its pollbooks for the 2025 municipal election and two months after The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article tying the county’s high staff turnover to what critics described as the election director’s heavy-handed management style.
On Monday, the county sent out mail-in ballot applications to voters on its annual mail voter list, sometimes referred to as the permanent list. The list comprises voters who, when applying for a mail ballot the prior year, indicated they wished to be sent an application the following year. Counties around the state mail out those applications around this time each winter.
Chester County officials said they became aware of the reversed names on Wednesday afternoon, but they didn’t post a notice about it on the county website until Friday morning, after the county was contacted by Votebeat and Spotlight PA.
“The County has confirmed with the Pennsylvania Department of State that voters can still complete and submit their applications to Voter Services, either online or using the paper applications, and they will be processed correctly,” spokesperson Andrew Kreider said via email.
Kreider added that the error occurred “during the printing process used by the County’s printing vendor.”
Matt Heckel, a spokesperson for the Department of State, confirmed the applications are still valid. He also said no other county reported similar issues with the vendor Chester County uses.
Thad Hall, election director for western Pennsylvania’s Mercer County, said the data for the applications comes from a spreadsheet from the Department of State. His office sends out its applications itself, but in the past it has also used a vendor.
Hall said counties typically send a letter informing voters they are on the annual list and telling them they can apply again for mail ballots; on the back of that letter is the application. His process involves using a template letter and performing a mail merge to populate that letter with voters’ names and addresses from the spreadsheet. Before sending out the materials to voters, he checks that they were generated properly, and when he used a vendor for this task, the vendor would send him a sample to check for accuracy.
Chester County’s election director, Karen Barsoum, confirmed that the vendor performed the merge and that a sample was sent back to the county for an accuracy check. Barsoum declined to say which employee or division of the office performed the check.
She said the accuracy check was more focused on confirming that the proper information, such as voter ID number or address, was connected to the right voter rather than whether the names were in the correct order.
Hall, the Mercer County director, said at this year’s conference of county election officials, organizers are planning to host panel discussions on leadership, delegation, and having effective vendor interactions.
“We will be doing panels that address these specific issues that have come up twice in Chester County,” he said. “We want to give people the tools to avoid these election pitfalls.”
The mail ballot application mishap comes on the heels of a contentious county meeting Tuesday night at which residents expressed their frustration over the county’s two other recent controversies.
During the November 2025 election, human error resulted in pollbooks getting printed without third-party and independent voters, forcing thousands of people to vote provisionally. (Virtually all of those people’s ballots were eventually counted.) Investigators determined that human error was compounded by the fact that the county did not have adequate processes in place to detect and prevent such problems.
Although the investigation did not conclude that Barsoum management style contributed to the county’s turnover, some commenters at the meeting called for Barsoum to be fired, arguing that her poor leadership had led to the department’s issues. A local blogger and radio station have also called for her ouster.
Following that meeting, county officials declined to comment on Barsoum’s future employment status, and Barsoum told Votebeat and Spotlight PA she had no intention of resigning.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
