No, Luzerne County vote counting is not finished

The review of Luzerne County primary election results will take at least two more days, possibly three, county Election Board Vice Chairman Peter Ouellette said Tuesday.

“We want to assure the public they should have confidence in the results. We’re doing a good job. It’s just taking longer,” Ouellette said.

As a result of continued counting, the board has postponed its Wednesday meeting, with a new date yet to be set, he said. The meeting had been scheduled with the expectation the board would vote to certify the June 2 primary election results, which can’t happen until the counting is finished.

After days of feverish mail-in processing by county workers, election board members spent Friday and Monday reviewing mail-in and provisional ballots to make sure only one ballot was accepted from each voter and rule on flagged issues, such as missing signatures or failure to place ballots in secrecy envelopes inside the mailing envelopes.

On Tuesday the board started tackling approximately 5,000 more ballots that had been mailed in or filled out at the polls. Ballots in this batch contain write-in votes that must be tallied or anomalies, such as one selection crossed out and another filled in.

In the latest review stage, Ouellette and board colleagues Keith Gould and Joyce Dombroski-Gebhardt reviewed each ballot projected on a large screen at the county-owned Penn Place building in downtown Wilkes-Barre until 4 p.m. Tuesday, with plans to resume at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday.

Each write-in vote must be examined and counted, including the typical ones made in jest, Ouellette said.

“One of the things that slows us down are the number voting for Mickey Mouse. Be that as it may, I can’t stop them from voting for whom they want,” Ouellette said.

A final tally of write-in votes will be available when the counting is complete, including the winners of many Republican committee seats that had no candidates appearing on the ballot, officials said.

In the presidential nomination, a “significant number” of both Democrats and Republicans opted to write in the contender on the opposite party ticket — incumbent Republican President Donald Trump or Democrat Joe Biden, Ouellette said.

“That is really interesting to me. It will be eye opening to see the numbers at the end,” he said.

In total, 64,306 Democrats and Republicans cast ballots in the primary — 40,161 through mail-in and 24,145 at polling places, according to the latest summary from county Election Director Shelby Watchilla.