Westmoreland County Finishes Counting In-Person Votes; A Couple Thousand Mail-In Ballots Remain
GREENSBURG, Pa. (KDKA) - On Election Day day three in Westmoreland County, the in-person votes are all counted but as Thursday began there was more work to do with the mail-in ballots.
"Right now, on Election Day at 8 p.m. we had 60,000 mail-in ballots that had been turned in to the Westmoreland County Election Bureau. As of today on our election result page, there's 56,000, so we're still counting another 4,000," said Westmoreland County Commissioner Gina Cerilli.
Commissioners Doug Chew and Gina Cirelli say some of the ballots needed a closer look.
"Some of them are questionable," said Chew. "Maybe the signature on the front envelope was not present, maybe the front envelope didn't exist, maybe there was no secrecy envelope, or the voter didn't show up in Westmoreland County. So there's a lot of reasons for those 4,000."
In a race as close as the one in Pennsylvania, each and every vote could potentially determine the fate of the nation. So who's judging these questionable ballots?
"So any ballot that needs adjudication will be put in front of people from both parties, a Republican and a Democrat. If the ballot is voteable, they will recreate a ballot so it can go in through the scanner and properly count," said Chew.
Three days in, we also now have a much clearer view of the number of provisional ballots yet to be counted and reviewed.
"We have approximately 3,600 provisional ballots we received and sorted out of the envelopes from the judges of elections," said Chew.
However, those provisional ballots will not be counted just yet.
"They will be meeting tomorrow, the provisional board, and hopefully starting over the weekend. It's really tough right now because we have to wait until the mail-in ballots that could potentially be counted come in tomorrow at 5 p.m. so we'll start the provisional after that takes place."
