HOLLIDAYSBURG — Blair County is changing some voting locations and hiring more help to get ready for the June 2 primary.

To address what’s likely to be about 10,000 requests for absentee and mail-in ballots — about seven times more than during an average presidential primary — the county has hired three full-time temporary employees to handle the workload.

“Every day we’re processing applications, stuffing ballots into envelopes and sending them out,” Director of Elections Sarah Seymour told the county salary board recently when asking for additional help.

The cost, she projected for the board, should be about $4,215 based on the two-week schedule, with pay $10 per hour and the opportunity for overtime at $15 per hour.

The salary board approved the additional hirings at a cost that might be recovered through state and/or federal resources allocated for COVID-19 expenses. The county anticipated some additional costs due to the state’s introduction of mailed ballots for any reason. But the major portion of the increase in requests is linked to the coronavirus pandemic.

For those who will be voting in person on June 2, the elections office is advising voters to check for what could be a new voting location.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, some facilities declined to accommodate a voting poll.

Other changes were needed because some people decided against working this year so some precincts are consolidated at one location.

“We lost nine teams,” Seymour told the elections board during its recent meeting. “They felt the risk was too high.”

Seymour is offering assurance of efforts to reduce and prevent coronavirus exposure at the polls. The county is supplying poll workers with masks, gloves, disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer. Voters should wear a mask inside the precinct and bring a blue or black ballpoint pen. If a voter depends on the poll workers to provide a pen, the pen is to be sanitized between uses.

Solicitor Nathan Karn also asked Seymour during the salary board meeting about the potential for voters to put completed ballots into the wrong scanner at a polling location with more than one precinct.

The precinct scanner would reject a ballot that’s meant for another precinct, Seymour said.

She also indicated that voting locations with more than one precinct will have “heavy signage.”

Karn said that changes in the voting locations and the combining of precincts is permitted in the primary under state legislation in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It provided flexibility to make movements you don’t normally make in an election,” Karn said.