Discarded Luzerne County military ballots officially counted

All nine overseas military mail ballots that had been discarded were officially accepted for counting by Luzerne County’s Election Board Friday morning.

Board member Joyce Dombroski-Gebhardt said she asked to review the nine discarded ballots first as part of Friday’s board examination of 455 ballots from county residents who are overseas. The board determined the nine met all legal requirements and should be cleared for tabulation.

“It was very important to me to start with those nine. I don’t want those voters disenfranchised. They’ve already gone through enough,” Dombroski-Gebhardt said.

A temporary independent seasonal worker was responsible for the discarded ballots and was immediately removed from service when county Election Bureau Director Shelby Watchilla discovered and reported problems with the ballots, officials have said. Federal investigators found no issues beyond the nine that had been discarded during the three-day period the temporary worker was employed, officials said.

Counting of the nine ballots is possible because bar codes and other information identifying the nine voters was retrieved along with the ballots, allowing the county to verify the ballots were valid, officials said.

Turnout

The board wrapped up its multi-day public review of ballots Friday.

With additions approved Friday, the county had 154,134 ballots cast in the Nov. 3 general, for a turnout of 69.76%, according to the updated results posted at luzernecounty.org.

The only potential ballot additions hinge on whether Democrats or Republicans pursue and win challenges of a small number of board denials.

County Republicans had argued around 300 provisional ballots cast at the polls should be counted, even though they were not inside both secrecy envelopes and outer envelopes signed by voters, officials said. The five-member, bi-partisan election board unanimously concluded the two envelopes and voter signature must apply to provisional ballots as they do for mail ones.

County Democrats also voiced plans Friday to contest the board’s rejection of 224 mail ballots. The board concluded these voters had not responded to county letters asking them to furnish additional information on their social security or driver’s license numbers due to discrepancies flagged by the voter database system. This correction process is known as “curing” a deficiency.

Dombroski-Gebhardt, a Republican, said she was the lone board dissenter on that matter because she was not furnished copies of each letter to personally verify the county had sent communications to all 224.

To initiate a challenge, the parties would have to pay $10 for each contested ballot — a parameter set in state election law, said county assistant solicitor Michael Butera. As of Friday night, neither party had paid the fee, officials said.

If a challenge is executed before the board publicly reconvenes at 8 a.m. Monday, the board would officially decide whether it will accept or deny the counting of those votes, Butera said. The party lodging the complaint would then have the option to appeal the board decision within two days in the county Court of Common Pleas, he said.

More work to do

While the board has essentially finished deciding which ballots are accepted, it must still review approximately 2,500 actual ballots containing write-in votes or issues requiring adjudication, such as selections crossed out or more than the allowable number of candidates selected in a particular race, Watchilla said.

The board manually reviews each write-in or anomaly to determine voter intent, showing its work on a big-screen projection in full view of the public.

However, due to the extensive number of write-in names that have no bearing on the outcome — including cartoon characters and celebrities — the board lumps many under a miscellaneous “scattered” category so it does not have to slow the process typing in each name to create an itemized list.

Election board members, who are not paid, have encouraged the public to attend this review to witness the painstaking work required to log write-in votes, including those intended as jokes. Audience seats were typically empty during this process following the June 2 primary. The board’s review starts at 8 a.m. Monday at the county’s Penn Place Building in downtown Wilkes-Barre.