Pittsburgh Jews Prefer Mail Voting in 2024 Passover Primary Conflict

With the Pennsylvania presidential primary slated for Tuesday, April 23 – the first day of Passover – the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle asked readers to let it know what method people planned to use to vote on one of the religion’s most important days.

Nearly 3 in 5 respondents (59 percent) indicated that they planned to vote via mail ballot, while 38% of the 294 respondents stated they intended to vote in-person at their respective polling place.

The holiday begins at sundown on Monday, April 22 and continues through sundown on Tuesday, April 30.

Four states originally had primaries scheduled for April 23. But Delaware, Rhode Island and Maryland all moved their elections to different dates. Pennsylvania is the only state with a primary still scheduled on the date.

The comments to the question were similar to what many who attempted to change the primary date anticipated … people were not pleased.

The Chronicle shared some of the responses which follow below:

“It’s discriminatory to schedule an election on a major religious holiday. The state is clueless at best.”

“Mail voting is easy, convenient, simple and it reduces costs. It is no more subject to fraud than in-person voting. I believe it should be mandatory.”

“Absentee ballot. It’s Yom Tov. I’m not voting on a holiday.”

“This is religious discrimination.”

“I prefer mail-in voting even when it’s not Passover.”

“As always, I will be voting in person in order to make sure that my vote counts and is not manipulated via mail-in voting scams as have occurred in the 2020 election!”

“I always vote by mail anyway, because I have disabilities that make it very challenging to vote in person, and I hold up other voters. So the fact that the election is on Passover is not the reason why I am voting by mail, and I appreciate the ability to vote by mail. I hope those who are insisting that voting by mail means fraud will consider how important the ability to vote this way is to those of us with disabilities.”