Allegheny County elections board finalizes provisional ballots

Allegheny County will finish this week counting its ballots from the Nov. 5 election, completing a weekslong process that has taken place amid legal challenges and on the heels of an automatic recount in Pennsylvania’s race for a U.S. Senate seat.

About 725,000 total ballots were cast in Allegheny County. Of those, 12,680 were provisional ballots, meaning there were questions about the voter’s eligibility that had to be resolved by the county’s Board of Elections.

On Monday, the board acted on the final 3,328 provisional ballots. It approved 1,310 and rejected the rest for various reasons, including that voters were not registered in Allegheny County, not registered to vote at all or already voted by mail.

Of those approved, 240 were finalized — meaning the votes they contained were added to the totals for individual candidates in various races — since Republican campaign lawyers withdrew their challenges.

The final 1,070 provisional ballots that were approved, but not yet added to candidates’ vote counts, can be appealed by campaigns until Wednesday.

The board took numerous votes Monday on batches of provisional ballots.

Approved ballots were supported by the board’s Democratic members — Innamorato and County Councilwoman at-large Bethany Hallam — and rejected by the board’s lone Republican member, county Councilman Sam DeMarco, who also leads the county’s Republican Party.

Rejected ballots — such as ones cast by voters not registered in Allegheny County or not registered at all — were unanimously voted down.

As part of its final vote count, Allegheny County will not tabulate mail-in ballots that arrived on time but lacked written dates on the outer envelope or had incorrectly written dates, officials said Monday.

Those specific types of ballots have generated controversy over the years and in the ongoing race for the Senate seat.

Some Pennsylvania counties chose to count the controversial mail-in ballots for this year’s general election, even as the issue remained the subject of legal challenges.

But the state Supreme Court ruled Monday that those ballots “shall not be counted” in the November election.

At a county elections board hearing Monday morning, officials announced there are 170 mail-in ballots with handwritten date errors.

“Based on a previous decision from the (state) Supreme Court, Allegheny County Elections Division is not counting undated or misdated mail-in ballots,” said Abigail Gardner, spokeswoman for county Executive Sara Innamorato. “Luckily due to our very proactive curing process, the number of ballots in that universe is only 170.”

Curing is the process by which the county notifies voters of a problem with their ballot and allows voters to correct the errors.

It’s unclear how many mail-in ballots with date errors remain across Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.

The effect of not counting mail-in ballots with date errors could impact the ongoing Senate race in which Republican businessman David McCormick leads by more than 17,000 votes over Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey. McCormick was leading Casey 48.8% to 48.6%, as of Monday afternoon.

The Associated Press and Decision Desk have called the race for McCormick. Casey has not conceded.

Casey’s path to victory appears increasingly narrow as outstanding ballots are being counted. Decision Desk estimates that there are fewer than 22,000 ballots remaining statewide. But with the race margin within 0.5%, a legally required recount has been triggered.

The recount starts Wednesday.