About seven hours before U.S. Senator Bob Casey conceded to Republican challenger Dave McCormick on Thursday evening, Lebanon County election officials had completed their portion of the state-mandated recount of that election.
Earlier in the week, the county had also conducted and completed the mandatory 2-percent audit of all ballots cast in the November election.
In both cases, the election results had basically not changed, a fact that pleased Drasher and the County Commissioners, who serve as election judges in years when they are not seeking re-election.
The variance in the Casey/McCormick Senate race recount of all votes cast in Lebanon County was negligible.
“I think the variance was 0.00012 percent from the election to the recount. So it’s not exact, but by God, man, that is really good,” said Drasher. “When we’re that close it was like, yeah, at that point you can say, ‘All right. We got it right.’ I think a lot of counties would be very pleased with this kind of a result.”
Concerning the 2-percent audit of about 1,700 votes, there was zero variance between the ballot results on Election Day and from the audit administered by a hand count by about 20 election canvassers who calculated the results as required by state law.
“The audit just confirmed exactly what the results were on the machine,” said Drasher. “That took a team of 17 people about three hours and the same number of ballots would take the machine about 15 minutes to process and they came to the same conclusion. It’s very pleasing that one method validated the other.”
As previously reported by LebTown during the recount, mail-in ballots were loaded into the voting machines used at precincts on Election Day and the machine that counted mail-in ballots counted precinct-cast ballots for the recount. Alternating processes from Election Day is also required by state law.
Read More: Lebanon County officials conduct U.S. Senate election recount, mandated audit
There were a total of 74,261 ballots cast in the general election, with 54,791 votes on Election Day being filed at local precincts and another 18,849 coming via mail-in or absentee ballot. There were also 621 provisional ballots cast for this election.
Of the 95,259 registered voters in Lebanon County, just under 78 percent voted in the November election.
“In our area there are certain, there were a lot of precincts that had high 80s for a percent turnout ratio. And then there were some precincts that historically always, always, always have very, very small, no matter what the election cycle is, they have extremely small turnout percentages,” said Drasher. “So when you look across the county, if you got rid of the outliers and you did a median, I bet you it would look really, really good.”
It was hoped that the Senate race recount would be concluded by Thursday and that a discussion concerning the audit and recount would occur during the commissioners meeting that morning.
However, there were two precincts that had to be counted again on Thursday morning since the machinery used for the recount required some minor maintenance due to the volume of votes processed throughout this election cycle.
In explaining how the machine ran into a minor problem, both Drasher and county administrator Jamie Wolgemuth separately used the analogy of the machines being like a car whose tires become worn over time. (Wolgemuth made that comment during the commissioners meeting while Drasher was down the hall wrapping up the recount.)
The belts on the machine being used for the recount of nearly 55,000 votes cast on Election Day and that also had processed over 18,000 mail-in ballots on Election Day became “smooth,” which led to the machine attempting to count two votes as one.
“Whatever stage we are at, we know where we need to be and when we need to be there. We were running the machines non-stop and we kept working through the process. While we were working I even had to tell one worker to actually go take a bathroom break,” said Drasher, noting that election workers were close to finishing the recount when the problem occurred. “All of a sudden we saw our numbers skewed one way. We then saw that the belts were smooth instead of grippy. We had been going and trying to get to the end, thinking we shouldn’t have a problem.”
The recount was halted on Wednesday evening for the belts to be replaced and then the votes for the last two precincts of Lebanon County’s 60 were then recounted on Thursday morning.
During the commissioners meeting and in response to a question from LebTown, election board member Robert Phillips said the election occurred without any issues being raised by election watchers or the general public.
“We didn’t have one contested vote throughout the process,” said Phillips.
Election board chairman Mike Kuhn said he was told by a local resident that an election watcher from Florida praised Lebanon County election officials for how they conducted their election.
“There’s been a tremendous amount of work by Sean and his team and so many people who stepped up (during the election),” said Kuhn. “He (the election watcher) was an attorney from Florida and he said if all counties ran their elections like Lebanon County, we’d all be better off. I thought that said a lot.”
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