As required by law, Lebanon County’s Election Board conducted on Monday the 2-percent audit and began the recount in the Casey/McCormick race for U.S. Senate.
Yesterday morning, election canvassers and county election officials processed about 1,700 ballots as part of the audit to certify voting machines worked accurately on Election Day. In the afternoon, election officials and canvassers dove into recounting all election ballots cast in Lebanon County as part of the mandated recount in the race between the two U.S. Senate candidates.
Any statewide race in Pennsylvania decided by 0.5% or less is automatically recounted, according to Sean Drasher, director of Lebanon County Elections. Drasher noted that all 67 Pennsylvania counties will recount all of their votes for that race.
Republican challenger Dave McCormick has a 0.2% lead over Democrat incumbent Senator Bob Casey as of Monday morning. Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt announced late last week that unofficial results in the Nov. 5 general election race for U.S. Senate triggered a legally required statewide recount.
As of Monday afternoon, the statewide count had McCormick at 3,395,907 votes, which is 48.8% and Casey at 3,378,450 votes, which is 48.6%. The margin difference in votes was 17,457.
“This is a legally triggered recount,” said Drasher. “This has nothing to do with the candidates or the parties. It’s a good law because it takes, in theory, the politics out of it. If it is less than 0.5 percent, we’re all doing it.”
Drasher said election canvassers were performing the recount of mail-in ballots by feeding them into voting machines used at precincts on Election Day. Several employees from the firm that printed the election ballots were running precinct voting ballots through separate machinery – actually the machines there were used to count mail-in ballots on Election Day – to recount those ballots on Monday.
“The Senate recount is using a mix of machines and people to count ballots, so nothing is being counted the original way that they were counted on Election Day,” said Drasher. “So Election Day ballots are being counted a different way than mail-in ballots were, so you have different processes touching everything.”
Drasher said he read that the cost to conduct the recount was estimated in media reports at $1 million statewide but believes local costs will be minimal.
“It’s not a huge amount for us,” he said. “Everything is already printed. We already have all of the machines, so no major cost compared to the (actual) election. The main difference is that we are paying the canvassers.”
Several hours into the recount no issues had been encountered. Drasher estimated that the recount should be completed by Wednesday afternoon,
“Some paper cuts kind of stuff,” he said, jokingly. “No, everything has been fine. We were setting everything up this morning while they were doing the audit, so we were able to do test runs.”
Drasher added that canvassers were sworn-in in the morning and others in the afternoon when several additional canvassers came to assist with the recount. In addition, accuracy testing was performed on the voting machines as required by law.
The Pennsylvania Department of State’s website says thorough logic and accuracy testing (L&A testing) ensures the election and voting equipment functions as expected and accurately counts votes as marked.
“The logic and accuracy testing we do before a full election, we did it all over again before we allowed them to touch the ballots again,” said Drasher. “So we cleared everything out, we showed the zero tapes to everybody, so they (the voting machines) went through a whole battery of tests again today.”
He is grateful for the 20 canvassers who agreed to assist with the recount and audit.
“They are people who are either retired or took off work and they’re spending not just one day, but multiple days,” said Drasher. “And it’s boring work by design. It should be boring because that means it’s working.”
The members of the Lebanon County Elections Board, which consists of the three County Commissioners in years where they are not seeking re-election, were checking ballots that didn’t feed properly into the voting machines.
“Most often what happens is that someone rips a ballot accidentally when they pick it up,” said Drasher. “It’s rare, but it happens. The other very rare thing that happens on Election Day is that someone will use a check mark or an X mark inside the oval and the first time through, it counts it right. The second time it stops it, and says, ‘Hey, can you confirm that this is right?’”
Concerning the 2-percent audit, county solicitor Matt Bugli said the election code requires a statistical sample recount or statistical sample audit of each election.
“It’s either the lesser of 2 percent of the total ballots cast or 2,000 votes,” he said. “So, in our case, the total number of ballots cast in Lebanon County, we took about 2 percent of that, which was about 1,700 votes.”
Bugli said the audit is a safeguard to ensure voting machines performed accurately.
“It verifies that there were no issues with voting machines on Election Day,” he added. “It ensures that voting machines were 100 percent accurate on Election Day. To be perfectly clear, there were no indications that there was anything wrong, this is required for every election. It’s a step that’s required in the election code.”
On Monday afternoon, while the ballots were being recounted across the hall, Bugli received an email stating that Commonwealth Court ruled that mail-in and absentee ballots that “fail to comply with the requirements of the Pennsylvania Election Code SHALL NOT BE COUNTED for purposes of the election” on Nov. 5.
Bugli said Bucks County election officials had decided in the days leading up to the election to allow mail-in or absentee ballots that were missing a date, a signature or the return security envelope to count for this election. However, that decision was in opposition to a previous court ruling.
Monday’s decision reaffirmed the prior decision, meaning those ballots in Bucks County are null and void.
Bugil told LebTown that Lebanon County followed the edict of the state court system and didn’t count the 142 mail-in or absentee ballots that contained mistakes on them.
However, at the approval of the county election board, Bugli was authorized to spend Election Day attempting to notify all 142 voters that they had the opportunity to go to a precinct and cast a provisional ballot since their mail-in or absentee ballot had been voided due to a mistake.
He added that a majority of the people on that list were grateful to be notified, adding it wasn’t a requirement but the election board did so as a courtesy to those voters.
Bugli noted that Lebanon County was “ahead of the curve” concerning the recount because officials had decided to begin it on Monday instead of Wednesday, which was the latest date mandated by the state for counties to begin their ballot recounts. The state is requiring counties to have recounts completed by Nov. 26.
“That won’t be a problem for us,” said Bugli. “Ours should be completed on Wednesday or Thursday by the latest.”
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