Luzerne County Election Board members continued their processing of May 16 primary election write-in votes Tuesday at the county’s Penn Place Building in downtown Wilkes-Barre.
Jennifer Learn-Andes | Times Leader
After more than 26 hours of collectively processing May 16 primary election write-in votes so far, Luzerne County Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams estimated at least one more full day of review would be necessary.
Williams said the board has been informed June 5 is the primary certification deadline.
In addition to addressing write-ins, the election cannot be closed out until the election bureau performs an audit of 2% of the election results and the board reviews a reconciliation report compiled by the bureau, Williams said.
Williams said the write-in tallying may be taking longer because the board has not received as many computer screens and trained county staff to assist in the processing as it did in prior elections.
Williams said she will seek discussion about obtaining more screens and staff assistance for future elections at the board’s next meeting in July.
The current supply limits “how much we can get done and how many people can be working,” she said, noting employees trained to assist in the past worked under the board’s supervision.
“We’re doing the best we can with what we have,” said Williams, who serves on the volunteer, five-citizen board with Alyssa Fusaro, James Mangan, Daniel Schramm and Audrey Serniak. “We’re plowing through it. Everybody is really working hard. It’s not idle hands — that’s for sure.”
Write-in name variations also slow down the process because the board must manually enter each one.
For example, board members said they have logged at least 30 different spellings of county District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce’s name.
Sanguedolce was unopposed in the primary and appeared on the Republican ballot, receiving 15,373 votes to obtain the party’s nomination, according to unofficial results.
He may also receive the Democratic nomination because no candidate appeared on the ballot, and at least 2,209 write-in votes were cast by Democratic voters.
The county plans to publicly release one mass report on the write-in results when the process is completed, rather than issuing piecemeal updates.
Once the results are certified, candidates will have a five-day window to formally file court paperwork if they want to request credit for write-in votes cast under different spelling variations of their name — a process known as cumulation.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.
