Luzerne County Election Board must process more than 200 mail ballots with incorrect/missing dates

Due to a recent court ruling, Luzerne County’s Election Board must meet again before the Nov. 7 general election certification to review and process more than 200 mail ballots that had incorrect or missing dates, officials said.

U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter in the Western District of Pennsylvania issued a ruling this week that mail ballots with missing or incorrect handwritten dates on the outer envelope should be counted.

Following previous guidance, the county’s five-citizen election board has been segregating and not counting such ballots.

The board had wrapped up its post-election adjudication Nov. 20 but will hold a special meeting at 8:30 a.m. Monday to address the ballots with date issues. This public adjudication process will be held in Room 301 of the county’s Penn Place Building, 20 N. Pennsylvania Ave., in Wilkes-Barre, said county Election Director Eryn Harvey.

Because of the added requirement, the board’s final certification of all county Nov. 7 election results will be held at 3 p.m. Monday instead of 1 p.m.

While the adjudication is at Penn Place, the certification meeting will be at the county courthouse on River Street in Wilkes-Barre. Instructions to remotely attend the certification are posted under the authorities/boards/commissions online meetings link at luzernecounty.org.

Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams said the ballots with date issues must be unsealed to ensure they meet other requirements, such as containing inner secrecy envelopes.

Write-in votes, if any, also must be tallied, she said.

As a result, the county cancelled a write-in tie-breaker process known as the “casting of lots” that had been scheduled Wednesday. Instead, this process will be held at Penn Place immediately following the board’s completion of adjudicating the ballots with date issues.

Some have argued dates on the mail ballot outer envelopes are immaterial because the mail ballots are issued during a window before each election, date-stamped when they arrive in the election bureau and not accepted if they are received after 8 p.m. on election night.

The more than 200 ballots with date issues came from voters throughout the county, which means the number concentrated in a specific area may not be high enough to impact local races.