Allegheny County ballot count nears end; Westmoreland officials discussing questionable ballots

The finish is in sight.

Allegheny County officials said late Wednesday that about 90% of mail ballots had been scanned and counted, with about 35,413 such ballots still needing to be tabulated out of the 348,485 returned in all.

Elections staff reported having scanned 313,072 mail ballots. That brings the total ballots cast in the county to 675,928, county spokeswoman Amie Downs said.

Allegheny County officials reported at 10:55 p.m. Wednesday that vote counting had ended for the night. Counting would not resume Thursday, Downs said, as “the Elections Division staff will be using the day to do administrative work.”

According to Downs, the 35,413 ballots remaining include:

• About 29,000 voters who received incorrect ballots last month and then received correct ballots;

• About 2,250 ballots that were not able to be scanned and “will need to be duplicated during the Return Board process”;

• About 4,350 ballots with various issues including missing dates or an illegible voter declaration.

NOW: Allegheny County officials explain why 35K ballots are being counted Friday. 29K are from voters who received the wrong ballot. By federal court order, they can’t be counted until 5 p.m. Fri. 6,800 (to be counted Fri at 9am by state order) were damaged/had other issues)

— Luis Fabregas (@LuisTrib) November 5, 2020

Ballots had to be postmarked by 8 p.m. Tuesday to be eligible to be counted.

The county’s Return Board will convene at 9 a.m. Friday. The Return Board, a standard part of the voting process, consists of members of the county Elections Division who evaluate all the ballots remaining after the main tabulation.

Six precincts whose results were not transmitted on Tuesday from regional reporting centers will be reported Thursday. Those include Braddock Hills 02, Homestead 01-01, Pittsburgh 20-13, Pittsburgh 25-01, Shaler 02-05 and Whitehall 09.

In October, the county announced that about 29,000 voters who had requested mail-in ballots were sent incorrect ballots — ballots intended for someone living in another voting district. A programming error at Midwest Direct, the Ohio contractor handling the printing and mailing of ballots, was responsible. New ballots were sent to affected voters; they were told to discard the previous, incorrect ballot and send the new one. Some voters had already returned the incorrect ballot. “The effort to reconcile those ballots with the voters will be done as part of the Return Board process,” Downs said.

County officials said an unknown number of ballots will need to be resolved with the Elections Division in consultation with the Law Department. The review of those ballots began on Wednesday. Downs did not elaborate.

Fate of questionable ballots being discussed in Greensburg

Westmoreland County is still deciding if an unknown number mail-in ballots that were initially rejected over the last two days can be counted.

County commissioners and Elections Bureau Director JoAnn Sebastiani have been meeting behind doors for more an hour Thursday morning as the status of ballots that are sitting in boxes pulled out of the counting process remain in limbo.

County officials have not said how many ballots are involved.

Elections staff late Wednesday night finished the initial count of more than 60,000 mail-in votes. The county issued more than 75,000 mail-in ballots to voters this fall.