GOP candidates and Allegheny County Elections officials reach settlement in lawsuit

A legal dispute between two Republican congressional candidates and the Allegheny County Board of Elections reached settlement Sunday, with the two sides agreeing on a process for handling nearly 29,000 erroneous mail-in ballots.

The agreed-upon process is the same one that the county laid out last week as the lawsuit was unfolding.

The federal complaint, filed Oct. 17 by Sean Parnell, who is running against U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, and Luke Negron, who is running against U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, both challenged the county over their right to have poll watchers at eight satellite election offices, as well as how the county should handle 28,869 voters who received the wrong ballot because of an error by the company contracted to handle the printing and mailing the ballots.

U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan said last week that the plaintiffs had failed to meet their burden required for a temporary restraining order for the poll watcher request.He set a hearing date for Wednesday on the question of how the ballots mailed in error would be processed but urged the two sides to try to reach an agreement.

In a consent order filed in federal court Sunday, the two parties agreed the Board of Elections would maintain its practice of sorting the affected ballots and storing them in designated portions of the locked ballot room. The Board of Elections agreed not to pre-canvass any of the initial or corrected ballots before the collection deadline, to ensure only one ballot is counted per voter.

According to the agreement, the board will segregate ballots into three categories: voters who returned only a corrected ballot, voters who returned only an initial ballot and voters who returned both.

Corrected ballots will be counted normally, in accordance with state law. When it comes to voters who returned only the initial, incorrect ballot, the board will count only those portions for public offices that the individual would have been eligible to vote for — state and national offices.

For voters who returned both the initial and corrected ballots, the corrected ballots will supersede the initial ones, according to the agreement and will be counted normally. The initial ballots will not be counted or opened at all.

“My clients demonstrated true leadershp in challenging this mailed ballot problem and pursuing a solution to ensure that every vote will count in Allegheny County,” said Attorney Thomas W. King III, who represented the plaintiffs.

But Allegheny County Solicitor Andrew Szefi characterized the filing of the lawsuit as a waste of time.

“These candidates sought to have poll watchers in offices and to challenge the ballots of over 28,000 innocent voters. They accomplished neither,” he said. “Instead, they are now endorsing a process that was in place and transparently explained before they ever took us to court. We are pleased that this waste of time and resources is behind us and that we can get back to the important work of ensuring a safe and accurate election process for all voters in Allegheny County.”