Final election results in Westmoreland delayed as mail-in ballot count continues - TribLIVE

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Election night victory parties now might have to be multiday affairs.

Final results of votes cast during Tuesday’s primary in Westmoreland County won’t be available for several days as the elections bureau adjusts to a new time-consuming process of counting tens of thousands of mail-in votes.

“We don’t expect final results until maybe Friday, and that’s barring any equipment failures,” Elections Bureau director Beth Lechman said.

Election night looked the same, in some regards, as it has in the past. Poll workers at the county’s 307 precincts brought results from the day’s voting to the Greensburg courthouse, where they were tallied and reported. Those votes, though, represented maybe half of the total that were cast.

What’s different this spring is that 40,000 mail-in ballots were counted separately in a process that could take days to complete, officials said. More than 48,000 had been requested, and the ballots had to be returned to the courthouse by 8 p.m. Tuesday.

By about 9:45 p.m., the first batch of results were posted on the county’s online election page. That group represents about 15% of the votes cast, including the first 6,000 mail-in ballots to be counted.

Eligible to vote in the party primaries were the county’s nearly 110,000 registered Republicans and about 102,500 registered Democrats.

Lechman said she expected participation to reach about 45%.

With no local contested races on either the Democratic or Republican ballots, the lack of results Tuesday night was not expected to be a concern for candidates and political leaders.

Come November, when voters will elect the president, members of Congress and state House and Senate seats, a delay in reporting results could be an issue.

“People want to know if they win and how the next day is going to unfold,” said Kerry Jobe, chairman of county’s Republican Committee. Jobe said early estimates project that Westmoreland could see 100,000 people vote by mail in the fall.

“I think they’re going to have to figure this out so we’re not waiting four days after the election to see who won,” Jobe said.

A spokeswoman for the county’s Democratic Committee had a different view. Annie Briscoe said expansion of mail-in voting outweighs any delays in reporting election results.

“The most important part is more people have a right to vote, and that’s well worth any delays,” Briscoe said.

Staff began counting mail-in ballots at 9 a.m. Tuesday and continued until midnight. The process will resume at 8 a.m. Wednesday and continue until the rest are counted.

More than 40 staffers, some pulled from other county departments, processed about 1,000 mail-in ballots per hour, Lechman said.

Staff used a special electronic opener to open sealed envelopes containing completed ballots. Those ballots were then manually opened and run through two digital scanners that tallied the votes.

Results from votes cast in person on voting machines at the precincts were reported as usual after polls closed at 8 p.m.

Results from the mail-in ballots won’t be released until all are counted, meaning the final tally will take several days, Lechman said.

Mail-in balloting is not new. Until this spring, however, it was limited to people who are out-of-town on Election Day. An amendment to the process approved by state lawmakers last year allowed for anyone to vote by mail for any reason.

Westmoreland election officials said about half of those voting in this year’s primary did so by mail.

Commissioner Sean Kertes said the popularity of mail-in balloting came at a cost. The county spent $7.1 million last year for new voting machines to meet a state mandate to ensure there is a verifiable paper trail of all ballots cast. It’s an expense that now seems excessive, Kertes said, as fewer voters opted to use the new touch-screen devices in favor of mail-in ballots.

“I’d like to get a reimbursement for those machines,” Kertes said.

Rich Cholodofsky is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Rich at 724-830-6293, rcholodofsky@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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Final election results in Westmoreland delayed as mail-in ballot count continues - TribLIVE

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