The Allegheny County Board Of Elections voted on Tuesday to count more than 2,300 ballots that do not have dates on the outer envelope, according to numerous local news sources.
“The ballots, which have not been opened, all arrived on or before Election Day, as they are stamped with a date when they’re received, according to Elections employees,” TribLIVE.com reported. “The Board of Elections, made up of Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, Councilman Sam DeMarco and Councilwoman Bethany Hallam, voted 2 to 1 to count those votes after a brief discussion. DeMarco voted against the motion.”
CBS Pittsburgh reported that the exact number of ballots that did not have dates on them was 2,349.
“Those dateless ballots will undergo further analysis to make sure they are eligible,” CBS Pittsburgh added. “So far, more than 2,600 ballots have been thrown out as part of the normal review process.”
Fox News noted that the law in the state says that the ballot mailing envelope “shall contain the date” and that tens of thousands of ballots still had not been counted.
Allegheny County solicitor Andrew Szefi said, “They applied on time, received their ballots, voted their ballots, returned them on time with their signature, their printed name, their address — the only thing they’re missing is their date. They were received timely, and our … ballot sorting machine imprints a date received on each envelope as they’re scanned.”
“We’ve taken a hard look at this,” Szefi added. “The legal principle at issue here is the Elections Code should always be construed so as to favor enfranchisement over disenfranchisement. What we have here is essentially a technicality that we don’t want voters to get disenfranchised with.”
David Voye, the Allegheny County Elections Division manager, said, “Right now, we are doing a comparison of any spoiled or surrendered ballots at the polling locations to make sure they didn’t surrender their correct ballot and vote at the polls. So we want to make sure we do that prior to counting the 7,000.”
“We have to determine, number one, if they were registered. Number two, if the precinct they voted in is the right precinct. Number three, if they applied for an absentee or mail-in ballot, that it’s already been returned,” Voye added.
The Associated Press called the presidential race in Pennsylvania on Sunday for Democrat nominee Joe Biden.
“Trump’s campaign launched a lawsuit to stop the certification of the election results in Pennsylvania, suing Monday as counties continued to sort through provisional ballots and mail-in ballots nearly a week after the election in the battleground state,” The Associated Press reported. “Trump’s campaign filed litigation in federal court over Pennsylvania’s presidential election, saying registered Democratic voters were treated more favorably than Republican voters.”
“The 85-page lawsuit itself contained no evidence of voter fraud, other than a smattering of allegations, such as an election worker in Chester County altering ‘over-voted’ ballots by changing votes that had been marked for Trump to another candidate,” the AP added. “The lawsuit asks the court to prevent the state, Philadelphia and six counties from certifying the results of the election. It also seeks to block them from counting mail-in ballots that weren’t witnessed by a Trump campaign representative when they were processed or counting ballots cast by voters who were given an opportunity to fix mail-in ballots that were going to be disqualified for a technicality.”