Luzerne County Election Board members review ballots Tuesday during the third day of the general election adjudication process. Clockwise, from left, are: Alyssa Fusaro, Audrey Serniak, Daniel Schramm, James Mangan and Denise Williams.
Were impacted by Wilkes-Barre error
To stay organized, Luzerne County Election Board members have been sorting mail ballots into different categories during the general election adjudication process at the county’s Penn Place building in downtown Wilkes-Barre.
After hours of painstaking review, Luzerne County’s Election Board identified 265 Wilkes-Barre mail ballots from last week’s general election that will be counted. These voters had been impacted by a mail ballot error.
The county issued new mail ballots to 1,557 city voters in Wards 2 to 8 and 14 to 20 because their initial ballot contained the incorrect city council race for their ward. That problem occurred when data files specifying which ballots these voters were supposed to receive did not correctly synchronize when files were merged, officials said.
Approximately 600 voters had mailed in the initial ballot, and the five-citizen, volunteer election board decided it must review all of them to see if any had failed to cast a correct ballot through no fault of their own.
This took time because the board had to verify which of the 600 voters did not send in a corrected ballot or vote provisionally at their polling place.
Once those steps were completed, the board then had to make sure there were no missing voter signatures, secrecy envelopes or other deficiencies prohibiting it from accepting the initial ballot.
The resulting 265 approved ballots then had to be transposed by bipartisan teams onto fresh ballots. All races were counted except city council races that were incorrect for the voter’s ward.
Election board members then spread out the transposed ballots on a table and proofed them to make sure there were no errors before they could be scanned in.
Tuesday was the third day of public adjudication, and the board will resume at 9 a.m. Wednesday in a room on the third floor of the county’s Penn Place building in downtown Wilkes-Barre.
In addition to adjudicating mail ballots, the board has been reviewing approximately 186 provisional ballots cast at the polls. The tallying of write-in votes may begin Wednesday.
Alyssa Fusaro, James Mangan, Daniel Schramm, Audrey Serniak and Denise Williams serve on the board.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.
