After three days, Luzerne County has finished counting mail-in ballots

Luzerne County workers finished processing all 40,300 primary election mail-in ballots shortly before 5 p.m. Thursday, officials said.

County Information Technology Director Mauro DiMauro said teams of workers from the election bureau and other departments were determined to remain at the county-owned Penn Place building in downtown Wilkes-Barre Thursday until they finished the job, he said.

“We’re moving. We’re getting in the home stretch,” DiMauro said around 3:45 p.m., when about 1,500 remained to be processed.

Workers had to open outer envelopes, shuffle the sealed secrecy envelopes inside and then open those to access ballots that had to be unfolded and smoothed so they didn’t cause a jam when batches were fed into scanner/tabulators.

The envelopes couldn’t be cracked open until 7 a.m. on Election Day under state law. Employees processed the mail-ins until 10 p.m. on Election Day and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday. They resumed at 9 a.m. Thursday, starting the day with 13,738 left to process.

County Election Director Shelby Watchilla said workers pulled together to complete the painstaking assignment.

“Through the dedication and hard work of our tremendous county staff from multiple departments and their hours of long work, we were able to finish a day earlier than anticipated,” Watchilla said.

Based on the numbers to date, about 63% of voters casting ballots Tuesday chose the mail-in ballot option, which was intended for convenience but became heavily promoted as a way to avoid safety concerns as the coronavirus pandemic unfolded.