Allegheny County elections workers began adding provisional ballots to the county’s vote tally on Tuesday, while the Board of Elections began deciding which ballots that have been challenged can be counted.
The process of adding up these ballots could take days because there are fewer staffers than the county had working on election night to go through them, according to county spokesperson Abigail Gardner.
The results of that painstaking process could have an impact on the race for U.S. Senate. The Associated Press has declared Republican Dave McCormick the winner, but Democrat Bob Casey has yet to concede, claiming that there are more than 100,000 ballots outstanding and that they could win enough of them to still win the race. McCormick had a lead of about 35,000 votes statewide as of early Tuesday afternoon.
There were 12,680 provisional ballots cast in the county, though the three-member Board of Elections made a decision Friday that will disqualify hundreds of them. In accordance with the county’s legal recommendations, the board voted not to count the ballots of voters who cast provisional ballots even though they were not registered in Allegheny County.
Lawyers for Republican Dave McCormick and Democrat Bob Casey were on hand to argue their side at the elections warehouse on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Casey’s lawyer, Mike Healey, argued that their campaign had found one provisional voter whose registration had not appeared in the system yet but who was registered in the county on election day. McCormick’s lawyer, Thomas Breth, didn’t object to including that ballot.
Casey’s campaign also lodged an objection, saying they believe that anyone who had recently moved to another county, but not yet registered to vote in their new county, should be allowed to come back and vote in their previous county one last time. But the Casey campaign didn’t present evidence Tuesday that there were any such voters.
McCormick’s campaign withdrew a challenge to hundreds of ballots based on the fact that voters misdated them. Both sides agreed that a challenge to the ballot dates was not material for provisional ballots because provisional ballots can only be cast on election day.
The Board of Elections also voted unanimously to count the votes of any provisional ballots that were not signed by both of the elections workers who are required to certify a provisional ballot. The county legal department argued, along with Healey, that a voter should not be disqualified because of staff error.
“We're talking about an election official error,” Healey said “The voter didn't do anything wrong. The voter did everything they were supposed to do.”
McCormick’s campaign argued the opposite, saying the election-worker signatures were a legal requirement. “We understand the argument that this would be an obligation of the election officials to sign that document,” Breth said. “It's not a subjective determination, it's objectively, on its face invalid because those signatures are not on the ballot.”
The only decision the board made that was not unanimous was about whether to count ballots of voters who signed their name only once rather than twice, as is required. Republican Sam DeMarco voted against accepting these votes, while Democrats Sara Innamorato and Bethany Hallam voted in favor.
The McCormick campaign argued that it wasn’t the job of elections officials to make sure voters follow instructions, while the Casey campaign argued that election officials are required to sign their name after the voters sign their names, and therefore the election workers should have noticed the missing second signature.
The board briefly discussed what to do about 174 mail-in ballots that were undated or incorrectly dated. Legal arguments over these ballots have been ongoing in recent years, with the most recent decision by the state Supreme Court affirming that these votes cannot be counted.
The board took no action on the matter. County officials said all of the challenged provisional ballots will be held separately until the time period where campaigns are allowed to appeal has passed.
The Board of Elections will meet on Monday next week to make final decisions on any provisional ballots that were not adjudicated on Tuesday.
