Luzerne County Election Board votes to reject mail ballots involved in mistaken unsealing

With no viable alternative, Luzerne County’s Election Board voted with visible sadness Friday evening to reject 142 Nov. 5 general election mail ballots from the 119th Legislative District that were inadvertently unsealed on Election Day instead of remaining segregated.

The ballots were in a batch of 1,301 mistakenly opened, which meant the ballots were separated from the outer envelopes that identify the voters.

They were supposed to be segregated because they were original ballots issued before the county discovered a misspelling of incumbent state Rep. Alec Ryncavage’s name. New ballots with the correct spelling were sent to approximately 7,000 voters in the district, but the board had intended to revisit the original ones and accept them if the voters never returned a new one.

Based on research of voter information on the unsealed outer envelopes, the county Election Bureau determined 1,159 of 1,301 returned a reissued ballot that was accepted.

However, there was no way to determine which ballots in the separated stack of 1,301 belonged to the remaining 142 voters.

To register the votes cast by 142, the board would have to accept all 1,301 ballots knowing the majority in the group — 89% — would be double votes from those with ballots already accepted.

Faced with that reality, county Assistant Solicitor Gene Molino said his recommendation had to be rejecting the entire batch. He said there was “no good answer” and that his advice was the “least bad answer.”

Molino noted he had discussed his recommendation with the Pennsylvania Department of State and the 119th District candidates, Ryncavage, a Republican, and Democrat Megan Kocher. Ryncavage won, with the latest unofficial results indicating he had a 7,593-vote lead over Kocher.

Three of five election board members were present when the analysis was presented to the board around 6 p.m. — Chairwoman Denise Williams, Daniel Schramm and Albert Schlosser. Board Vice Chairwoman Alyssa Fusaro was not present Friday due to a prior obligation. Board member Rick Morelli was in attendance most of the day but not at the time of that vote.

County Election Director Emily Cook said the 142 ballots that won’t be counted were scattered throughout the district and from both Democratic and Republican voters.

Williams had said she was “shocked” during mail ballot processing when a worker pointed out the presence of a ballot with Ryncavage’s name misspelled because ballots with the misspelling were supposed to be segregated.

County Manager Romilda Crocamo has said her understanding was that a worker mistakenly transported segregated ballots to the processing room not realizing they must be handled differently than the others.

Mail ballots inside the secure election bureau room are kept in clear plastic storage containers. Going forward, an option could be colored bins and enhanced bin labeling for segregated ballots so their status is clear, she had said.

The current bin/label system had been used without incident to keep ballots segregated in multiple elections, and this was the first time a misidentification occurred, she had said.

Dominion Voting Systems, the county’s voting equipment supplier, accepted responsibility for the “Tyncavage” misspelling, citing human error, and agreed to cover the cost of corrected ballots.

Saturday session

In other Friday adjudication updates, the board and Cook agreed a Saturday session was necessary to ensure the county stays on track in completing work required to certify the Nov. 5 general election results.

The board will meet at 9 a.m. Saturday in the third-floor adjudication room at the county’s Penn Place Building, 20 N. Pennsylvania Ave., Wilkes-Barre.