Canvass board finishes mail-in vote count in Washington County
Washington County’s election canvass board finished counting mail-in and provisional ballots Monday and began tabulating write-in votes for local government and school board races.
The board finished counting most of the outstanding mail-in votes when it convened Friday, but still had to finish going through about 100 provisionals while determining votes on 207 mail-in ballots that had flaws, such as markings on parts of the paper that the scanning machine rejected.
The six-member canvass board sat at a table in the commissioners meeting room Monday morning while working on counting the remaining votes under the watchful eye of Elections Director Melanie Ostrander, who offered help when asked for assistance.
Write-in votes for local government and school board races are now being counted, meaning the winners in contested elections – such as Peters Township School Board that netted nearly 9,000 write-in votes and Donora Borough Council that received more than 800 such votes – may not be known until Wednesday.
But the vast majority of other local races had been counted to allow for a complete listing of unofficial results from the Nov. 2 general election.
One wrinkle to the situation may be the exceedingly close statewide race for Commonwealth Court, which could necessitate a recount. If a statewide race falls within 0.5% between the winning and losing candidates, a recount will be initiated by the Department of State. Currently, Democrat Lori Dumas leads Republican Drew Crompton by 0.24% for the second open seat for state Commonwealth Court.
Ostrander said they will likely have to report unofficial results and any outstanding votes remaining to the state by 5 p.m. today, which will then give Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid the chance to determine whether to order a statewide recount by 5 p.m. Thursday. If the state was to order a recount, Ostrander said they would have to begin no later than Nov. 17 and complete it by Nov. 23. Meanwhile, the county has to send its certified results to the state by Nov. 22.
The unofficial election results in Washington County can be found online at www.co.washington.pa.us/elections.