The Allegheny County Board of Elections certified most of the winners in the May 17 primary on Monday morning — and added a few new names of candidates eligible to appear on the ballot in November.
But the three-member board also revisited Election Day stumbles that took place last month, and pledged to prevent them from happening again in November.
The gathering was the board's first since the primary, and it voted to certify the results in almost every race on the two primary ballots. The biggest exception was the Republican contest for U.S. Senate, which is in the final stages of a statewide recount even though the race has been conceded to frontrunner Mehmet Oz.
The county did release the results of its own recount effort, which was carried out last week. Oz’s top challenger, hedge fund executive David McCormick, gained a total of 7 local votes, finishing with 36,412 to Oz’s 29,646 – nowhere near enough to make an appreciable dent in Oz’s statewide lead.
Also left out of the board’s certification were a number of races for elected posts to the county committees for the Republican and Democratic parties. The races involved write-in efforts, which take time for county workers to tabulate. The Senate recount took precedence over that work, though officials say those results should be in hand by the end of the week.
But the county did release the names of a half-dozen successful write-in candidates for state House. Four Democrats and two Republicans earned the right to compete in November, and almost all will face established incumbents who would appear to be in safe districts. The challengers are:
- Republican Matthew Kruth in the 20th District seat held by Democrat Emily Kinkead
- Democrat Alison Shepherd Duncan in the 28th District currently held by Republican Rob Mercuri
- Democrat Richard Self in the 39th District, where Republican Andrew Kuzma handily defeated incumbent Mike Puskaric
- Democrat Sharon Guidi-Kretschmar, who seems poised for a rematch against 40th District incumbent Natalie Mihalek
- Republican Patricia Tylka in the 42nd District seat held by Democrat Dan Miller
- Democrat Deborah Turici in the 44th District seat held by Republican Valerie Gaydos
County officials also discussed the handling of the primary itself, and gave themselves mixed reviews.
County director of administrative services Jessica Garofolo praised the elections department as a model for other counties, especially when it came to tasks like tabulating the over 92,000 mail-in ballots that came in. But she acknowledged that there were polling places scattered across the county where election workers ran out of ballots.
Garofolo cited a range of challenges, starting with the difficulty of devising a reliable turnout estimate.
“Unfortunately, COVID is on an uptick, and that’s been a variable that we just haven’t been able to wrap our arms around,” Garofolo said. “COVID coupled with just not really knowing what voter turnout was going to be in this election, we shorted ourselves on in-person ballots, both Democrat and Republican.”
The county was able to print up new ballots from its warehouse quickly, she said, but resupply efforts got snarled by traffic backups as a result of a vehicle fire on the Liberty Bridge.
“A dump truck catching fire on the Liberty Bridge wasn't something that we planned for,” Garofolo said.
Workers were able to print some “Express Vote” ballots on site, but there have been claims that some voters left without voting. Garofolo acknowledged things were “not up to the standard that we set, and we're extremely sorry for that.”
Board member Sam DeMarco, who chairs the Republican Committee of Allegheny County and serves on Allegheny County Council, said that “what occurred on Election Day was unacceptable. … There were people who were turned away.”
DeMarco, who generally praises the efforts of election workers, said he understood the massive logistical challenges of Election Day. Still, he said, “There are people that were disenfranchised, people that didn’t get to cast their vote.”
He joined with fellow Election Board member and county councilor Bethany Hallam on a motion to ensure that in November, each polling place would have one ballot for each registered voter who hadn’t requested a mail-in ballot. That risks a large number of wasted ballots — since turnout typically falls well short of 100 percent — but avoids the prospect of voters coming away empty-handed.
The lone no vote on the three-member board was County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, though he made clear that his concerns were procedural. “I just don't like to do these motions on the fly,” he said.
