Allegheny County resumes processing remaining election ballots
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More than two dozen observers from both major parties – including two representatives from Congress — are watching as Allegheny County elections officials continue to process several categories of ballots that remain to be counted.
Bins of ballots that still need to be resolved are being reviewed by the Elections Division manager and deputy manager at a table in front of the observers, which are made up of seven Democratic observers and 17 Republicans, according to county spokeswoman Amie Downs.
She did not identify the representatives from Congress.
The ballots in those bins will be sorted into two categories: those that cannot be processed in any way and those that will need to be researched further to see if they can be processed.
Officials are also going through ballots surrendered at polling places to separate out any ballots returned by voters who received an incorrect – and later corrected – ballot.
In October, officials announced a printing mishap with third-party vendor Midwest Direct, an Ohio company contracted by the county to print and mail ballots to Allegheny County voters. Nearly 29,000 voters received the wrong ballot and were later sent corrected ballots.
The process Monday involves going through the surrendered ballots – mail-in ballots given up by voters who went to the polls to vote – and matching up those surrendered ballots with the incorrect ballots that still need to be reviewed. This step, Downs said, ensures that anyone who voted in person will not have their incorrect ballot counted as well.
Several precincts in the county also still have memory sticks in their scanners, though in most of those cases, the votes were already returned and counted, she said.
As of 2 p.m. Saturday when vote-counting stopped for the weekend, there were around 7,000 ballots from that batch of 29,000 that remained. Members of the Return Board were sent home until Monday, as more administrative work remained to be done before those ballots could be processed.
An additional 17,000 provisional ballots still need to be counted as well.
Before being sent home Saturday, the Return Board scanned an additional 7,200 ballots at the county’s elections warehouse on Pittsburgh’s North Side, bringing the total number of ballots to 702,315 in Allegheny County.
Joe Biden received an additional 5,184 votes to Trump’s 1,893.
Biden leads Trump by about 143,600 votes in Allegheny County. That was up from Biden’s lead Friday night of about 138,400 votes.
The Associated Press and other news organizations called the race for Biden on Saturday morning.