Luzerne County nearing completion of U.S. Senate recount

Luzerne County’s mandated recount in the U.S. Senate race is expected to wrap up Friday afternoon, county Election Board member Alyssa Fusaro said Thursday.

Acting Secretary of State Leigh M. Chapman ordered the statewide recount because the top two unofficial winners — Mehmet C. Oz and David H. McCormick — have vote totals within a one half of 1% margin.

The county’s recount started Wednesday afternoon and continued Thursday.

So far, approximately 45,000 of 64,000 ballots have been rescanned based on a status report from county Election Director Michael Susek, Fusaro said.

All ballots must be fed through electronic tabulators again — provisional, mail and the ones voters placed into the scanners at polling places. The polling place ballots drop into a container and are retained to create a paper trail.

For the mail ballot portion of the recount, the county cannot reuse the tabulator that had been deployed for the tally immediately after the May 17 primary election, which means a different tabulator was set up for the recount, Fusaro said.

Teams of county workers were brought in to assist with the recount, Fusaro said.

She credited Acting Manager Brian Swetz, saying he checked in several times during the process to determine if anything was needed by the five-citizen, volunteer election board.

“He stepped up. It was nice to know that we had that help,” Fusaro said.

The recount completion deadline is noon on June 7. The state estimated the recount will cost taxpayers more than $1 million and verified it will be reimbursing counties to cover the expense.

Fusaro said it’s possible the board will be voting to certify all primary election results on Monday.