Allegheny County officials explain why thousands of ballots can't yet be counted

More than 35,000 ballots cast in Allegheny County will not be counted until Friday at the earliest, and county officials estimate there could be thousands more provisional ballots in boxes that have yet to be opened.

About 29,000 ballots cannot be opened until 5 p.m. Friday as dictated by a federal court order, said Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. That batch of ballots is connected to a printing error by the Ohio-based ballot vendor Midwest Direct, which sent the wrong ballots to about 29,000 Allegheny County residents last month. New, corrected ballots were sent to those affected.

Republican candidates Sean Parnell, running against U.S. Rep Conor Lamb, and Luke Negron, running against U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, filed a lawsuit in the aftermath of the ballot mishap challenging how the county should handle those ballots.

The two sides agreed to a process that would have the Allegheny County Board of Elections continue with its plan to segregate the affected ballots. The Board of Elections agreed not to pre-canvass any of the initial or corrected ballots before the collection deadline, which this year is 5 p.m. Friday to account for mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day.

Another 6,800 ballots have been set aside because they were damaged or had other issues, such as missing secrecy envelopes and incorrect dates.

At 9 a.m. Friday, the Board of Elections will swear in what is known as a return board to examine those 6,800 ballots. That board, Fitzgerald said, will include dozens of elections employees. The public and poll watchers will be able to observe the process.

Under state law, counties cannot swear in a return board until three days after an election.

In addition to those 35,000 ballots, the county has not begun to process provisional ballots, which can be cast for any number of reasons, including a voter requesting a mail-in ballot but not receiving one.

Fitzgerald said the county received about 5,000 provisional ballots in the June primary. He said “there could easily be double that or more” that were cast Tuesday.

There could be between 10,000 and 15,000 provisional ballots waiting to be tallied, Fitzgerald said, but “we just don’t know.”

Elections workers will have additional mail-in ballots to contend with Friday, because Pennsylvania is accepting and counting any ballot received by 5 p.m. Friday that was postmarked at or before 8 p.m. on Election Day.

Fitzgerald said there were about 5,000 of those ballots in Wednesday’s mail.

He said Thursday would be spent preparing the elections warehouse on Pittsburgh’s North Side for the counting and processing set to happen Friday.

As of Wednesday night, 675,928 votes had been recorded and reported to the state, Fitzgerald said.