Nov 3, 2017 3 min read

An unusually high number of absentee ballots have been submitted for the upcoming election in Monessen, where there is a heated race for the mayor’s office.

The number of absentee ballots from Monessen was approaching 600 Friday at Westmoreland County Elections Bureau as the sitting mayor, Lou Mavrakis, 80, stages a write-in campaign against Matthew Shorraw, 27, who defeated Mavrakis in the spring primary, said David Millstein, solicitor for the Westmoreland County Democratic Committee.

“The party is going to take a wait-and-see attitude about them,” said Millstein, of Greensburg. “We are aware that there are way, way more of them than ever before.”

Just 38 people voted by absentee ballot during the last mayoral race in November 2013, Westmoreland County voting records indicate. The county issued a total of 1,437 absentee ballots in the 2015 general election.

Mavrakis said his campaign reached out to the elections office and was mistakenly told people who are 65 years old or older can get absentee ballots. He said his supporters wanted them because a voting precinct was moved without notice in the spring from the high school to the middle school, both of which are in the same building.

“Voters were turned away. That’s my precinct. They are my supporters,” Mavrakis said. “I had to do something to protect the people who voted for me.”

A state election official notified Westmoreland County Monday that being 65 years old or older is not, in and of itself, an acceptable reason under state law to get an absentee ballot, something the county has been doing since 2004, Millstein said.

“The mistake – that’s not my problem,” Mavrakis said.

Mavrakis lost to Shorraw in the spring by 59 votes. Both are Democrats, and there is no Republican candidate on the ballot.

Millstein said there is too short a window leading up to Tuesday’s election to challenge the absentee ballots, some of which appeared to have been filled out with the same handwriting. He also said a challenge costs $10 per ballot, and that a decision to challenge the ones from Monessen would be time-consuming and expensive.

“The elections bureau flatly refused to do anything,” he said.

If this happens again in the next election, someone would have time to file a lawsuit, he added.

The Westmoreland County commissioners also sit on the county’s election board, and they have set a Nov. 13 meeting to review the absentee ballots in question.

Commissioner Charles Anderson said the county “is doing everything possible” to let the nearly 400 Monessen residents who were given absentee ballots because of their age know they need to go to their polling place if they want their votes to count next week. He said the county was calling and mailing letters to inform them to vote in person.

“This issue has never risen before,” Anderson said.

Beth Lechman, director of the elections bureau in Westmoreland County, did not return messages Friday. Shorraw also could not be reached for comment.