May 8, 2024 By Mike Jones 3 min read

Nearly 300 mail-in and absentee ballots from last month’s primary were not counted in Washington County due to fatal flaws such as missing signatures or issues with the date.

Out of the 286 ballots that were received by the elections office but not counted, 251 contained errors that could have been “cured” by voters had the county’s elections board permitted that process in the days leading up to the April 23 primary.

According to the election office’s figures, 185 of the ballots – the vast majority of the ones with flaws – were signed but either had no date, an incomplete date or an incorrect date, meaning they could not be counted due to state election laws. Another 52 ballots were neither signed nor dated.

The county’s elections board voted 2-1 to not allow ballot curing during its April 11 meeting, with Republican Commissioners Nick Sherman and Electra Janis voting against the procedure and Democratic Commissioner Larry Maggi voting in favor of allowing people to fix mistakes. Ballot curing – which was permitted in neighboring Fayette and Greene counties – would have allowed elections workers to notify voters who made mistakes on their ballot envelopes to come to the county offices in person to correct any errors so their vote would be counted.

The elections office received 11,471 total mail-in and absentee ballots, meaning the 286 that weren’t counted represented a 2.5% rejection rate. An additional 251 ballots did not arrive by the 8 p.m. deadline on primary election day, so they were not processed.

The vote not to allow ballot curing sparked outrage during the county commissioners’ April 18 regular voting meeting with numerous speakers denouncing the decision during public comment, although several people also applauded the move by Sherman and Janis. The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia-based Public Interest Law Center also sent a letter to the county on April 16 urging officials to reconsider their decision or possibly face litigation.

Washington County’s elections board is scheduled to certify the primary election results at 11 a.m. Monday in the conference room attached to the commissioners’ public meeting room in the Crossroads Center building.

The ballot curing process was relatively effective in Fayette County, where elections officials there said more than half of the 81 defective ballots were corrected by voters and counted. Elections workers in Fayette County sent a letter to any voter who failed to sign or date the envelope, and also emailed or called to notify people about any issues. The major flaws there also involved dates, with 32 ballots that had no date and 24 with the wrong date, along with another 15 that had no signatures or dates.

In total, 41 voters were able to “cure” their ballots so they were counted for the primary, elections officials said. That means only 40 of the 6,047 mail-in votes the county received were rejected, which is less than 1%.

In Greene County, the number of rejected mail-in ballots due to flaws was in the “low teens,” elections officials said, although no one came into the office to cure their ballot. Greene County elections workers sent a list of names of people who had their ballots rejected to the two local party committees, giving them the opportunity to contact the voters to inform them of the issues.