Luzerne County Election Board members Audrey Serniak (in pink) and Denise Williams monitor seated workers tallying Nov. 2 general election write-in votes Wednesday in a courtroom at the county’s Penn Place Building in downtown Wilkes-Barre.
Jennifer Learn-Andes | Times Leader
Luzerne County’s volunteer Election Board is still busy adjudicating ballots from the Nov. 2 general election and may not finish until early next week.
This already cumbersome process may not put the election results to rest because the board learned Wednesday a statutorily required statewide recount has been ordered in the race for two open Commonwealth Court seats.
The board started its adjudication Friday by determining whether paper provisional ballots cast at the polls and mail ballots flagged for a myriad of reasons can and should be tallied.
It convened again Monday through Wednesday to review an estimated 15,000 write-in votes cast on both electronic ballot marking devices at the polls and mail ballots.
Multiple workers painstakingly entered each write-in name, including separate entries for different spelling variations, and recorded every vote cast for that person under the observation of bipartisan election board members. Their work was publicly displayed on large screens set up inside a third-floor courtroom at the county’s Penn Place Building in downtown Wilkes-Barre.
Because county buildings are closed Thursday for Veterans Day, the board will resume this write-in review on Friday and likely Monday, said board Chairwoman Denise Williams.
Separate from the write-in tally, the board must assess how it should respond to provisional and mail ballot anomalies that were detected by the scanners/tabulators and highlighted with an exclamation point inside a red outline. Examples include voters failing to fully shade in ovals or selecting more than the allowable number of candidates.
All votes accepted by the board for ballot candidates will be added to current tallies online after the adjudication is completed along with the write-in results, Williams said.
Recount
County officials are still assessing what work must be involved in the recount, said County Acting Manager Romilda Crocamo.
Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid issued notice Wednesday that she will order a recount because the second- and third-place finishers — Democrat Lori A. Dumas and Republican Drew Crompton — have unofficial vote totals within the one-half of one percent margin that triggers a mandatory recount under state law.
Republican Stacy Marie Wallace secured one of the open Commonwealth Court seats based on unofficial vote counts from all 67 counties indicating she obtained 26.61% of the votes, the state release said.
Dumas had received 25.36% of the votes, compared to 25.03% for Crompton as of Wednesday, the release said.
The department estimates that the recount will cost taxpayers at least $1.3 million.
Crocamo said direction on the recount must come from the state, and the only definite guidance she has received so far is that it must be started by Nov. 17 and completed by noon on Nov. 23.
She said the process will be more involved if the state requires a hand recount because the county would have to review all ballots that voters fed into scanner tabulators at polling places on Election Day, as opposed to relying on results extracted from the tabulators.
A total 61,837 ballots were cast in the county in the Nov. 2 general.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.
