Luzerne County Election Board faces myriad of issues adjudicating ballots

Luzerne County’s Election Board reviewed hundreds of provisional and flagged mail ballots Friday and ended up counting an additional 675 while rejecting others.

It was painstaking work, all performed in public at the county’s Penn Place Building in downtown Wilkes-Barre.

Republican county Councilman Walter Griffith and Democrat Bob Caruso, who has been monitoring elections for decades, were designated by their parties to provide input to the board before it decided each matter.

The first up for review were 32 mail ballots missing signatures on the outer envelope.

Assistant Solicitor Paula Radick said they must be rejected because the Supreme Court concluded a signature is required, and the volunteer, citizen board unanimously agreed.

“It hurt my heart a little bit to see this, but it’s clear they must sign the back of the envelope,” said board Chairwoman Denise Williams.

Board member Audrey Serniak said the signature is something that would be required at polling places to vote on the electronic ballot marking devices.

Another 101 mail ballots had signatures but no date.

Radick recommended those ballots be accepted because the Supreme Court determined the date is not mandatory as long as the ballots are signed and recorded as received before 8 p.m. on Election Day, which they were. The board unanimously agreed.

Another batch of approximately 70 were reviewed because the outer envelopes had voter-entered dates that did not fall between Oct. 19 — when the ballots were sent — and Election Day. However, the ballots were all time-stamped by the election bureau as received within the correct period. Some cases appeared to be voters entering their birth dates. They were all accepted by the board.

There were more than 100 ballots not counted because the voters failed to place them in secrecy envelopes, known as “naked ballots.”

There was some debate about whether another batch of ballots should be accepted because the secrecy envelopes contained marks.

Radick said the court has determined “identifying marks” on the secrecy envelopes are not allowable.

Nineteen with signatures on the secrecy envelopes were rejected, but the board agreed to accept several with two or three letters. The board reasoned they may not be initials and could not be linked to specific voters even if they are initials because the secrecy envelopes are separated from the outer envelopes and processed by separate teams on Election Day.

In two cases, voters inserted their ballots in the same shared secrecy envelope, which is clear ground for disqualification.

At one point, Deputy Election Director Eryn Harvey brought out a tray of mail ballots that had to be reviewed one-by-one due to a myriad of issues that caused them to be set aside for adjudication.

One had a brown stain that those touching the ballot hoped was coffee, and another was pink. They were accepted by the board because everything else was in order, although they may have to be transposed on a fresh ballot by a bipartisan team if the scanner/tabulator won’t properly read them.

The board rejected one that was delivered in the secrecy envelope, with the outer envelope inside.

Two voters sent their ballots through overnight delivery at a cost of $27.10 each, and the election bureau did not realize ballots were inside until after 8 p.m. on Election Day. However, the board was able to accept them because Harvey looked up the postal system tracking number and verified they had been delivered to the county at 7:50 a.m. on Election Day.

Griffith and Caruso commended the board for its revamped adjudication procedure, which included more detailed explanations and legal analysis before each issue was tackled.

Kingston mayoral race

Kingston mayoral candidates Jeffrey R. Coslett and Robert J. Thompson Jr. attended the adjudication because they were one vote apart in the unofficial tally, meaning provisional and flagged mail ballots could impact their tallies.

Thompson, a Republican, had 1,308 votes to Democrat Coslett’s 1,307 votes. With the addition of ballots Friday, Coslett was up by nine votes.

However, no final conclusions can be drawn because the board must still adjudicate paper ballots that were flagged because voters picked too many candidates in a race or did not darken the oval correctly.

Updated results were posted at luzernecounty.org.