Nearly 8 in 10 Allegheny County ballots counted Friday favored Biden

Nearly 8 in 10 ballots counted Friday night in Allegheny County went for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, results show.

Of about 17,800 ballots — including military and overseas, damaged and some mail-in ballots — Biden claimed 13,900 votes to Donald Trump’s 3,700 votes, according to incomplete results announced shortly before 11 p.m. by Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

With more than 30,000 ballots still to be counted, the results announced Friday gave the Democratic presidential nominee another small boost in the fight to secure Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said that he anticipated the race to be called soon based on Biden’s narrow but widening lead statewide.

Sworn members of Allegheny County’s Return Board continued counting another batch of 29,000 remaining ballots in Allegheny County, a process they were not permitted to start until 5 p.m. and was expected to continue on Saturday.

“I can’t estimate how long the process is going to take. … I don’t want to guess,” David Voye, elections division manager, told reporters at the county’s elections warehouse on Pittsburgh’s North Side. “It’s a time-consuming process, we’re working as hard as we can.”

That batch of 29,000 ballots — all received on or before Election Day — had to be segregated from the rest, as they were part of an October printing mishap by Midwest Direct, the Ohio vendor with which the county contracted for ballot printing and mailing.

New ballots were sent to those who were affected, but some local Republican congressional candidates took issue with the process. An agreement was reached in which the county agreed to set aside the ballots until 5 p.m. Friday. From there, they will be processed and reviewed to make sure there is but one vote per voter.

That process must be completed before the counting of 17,000 provisional ballots — more than triple the number received during the June primary.

The Return Board members began their jobs about 9 a.m. Friday after 80 of them were sworn in by Fitzgerald.

“The eyes of the country right now are on us,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s OK. We’re ready.”

Here’s a better quality clip of the Return Board being sworn in in Allegheny County pic.twitter.com/LOk94bnJFg

— Megan Guza (@meganguzaTrib) November 6, 2020

Fitzgerald administered the oath, in which members pledged to support, obey and defend the U.S. Constitution and swore they would not count or tally any invalid ballots .

Return Board members earlier in the day processed 2,200 ballots that would not scan on election night – ballots that are eligible to be counted but would not go through the scanner for one reason or another. Another 4,000 ballots that had other issues, such as damage or missing dates, were also processed.

State law dictates that no county can swear in a Return Board until three days after the election.

Observers from both parties are watching the process, and they can request to see any ballot they feel is being mishandled.

Provisional ballots have not been counted, nor have any ballots that arrived after Election Day but were postmarked by 8 p.m. Tuesday.

County officials announced Friday afternoon that the Elections Division estimates there are around 17,000 provisional ballots and they expect that number to grow.

Provisional ballots are ballots cast at the polls for myriad reasons on Election Day. Those include if a voter goes to the wrong polling place, they were asked to show ID and they don’t have it, or they completed a mail-in ballot that was rejected but believe they are still eligible to vote.

Provisional ballots that fall into the last category are the subject of a Commonwealth Court order that dictated county elections boards to set aside ballots that meet these criteria: it is a provisional ballot cast on election day and it was cast to replace a rejected mail-in or absentee ballot.

It was not clear Friday afternoon how many of Allegheny County’s 17,000 mail-in ballots and counting fit those criteria.

Allegheny County has also received just under 3,900 military and overseas ballots, for which the deadline is Tuesday.

County spokeswoman Amie Downs said the Return Board will be responsible for processing Allegheny County’s provisional ballots, though the timetable for that “will depend on how long the process is for the overseas/military ballots that they’re doing.”

Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar said in a statement about 4 p.m. that the “overwhelming majority of mail-in and absentee ballots” in the state had been counted and the process of counting provisional ballots was starting to get underway.

Under state law, counties must examine each provisional ballot individually and assess within seven days whether they “meet the standards for counting,” Boockvar said. That involves verifying the voter was registered in the precinct in which the ballot was cast and they did not cast a mail-in ballot prior to voting via provisional ballot.

Protesters react

Outside the warehouse on Pittsburgh’s North Side, protesters gathered for a “Stop the Steal” rally, alleging fraud within the voting and counting process and “the theft of the election by the Democrats,” according to Danny DeVito, who was among the crowd.

DeVito, a Republican candidate for state representative in the state’s 45th District, said he believes “the Democrats and the Deep State are trying to launch a coup against President Trump.”

Danny DeVito, Republican candidate in the 45th District, on the reasonin behind the “Stop the Steal” rally. To be clear, again, the ballots inside the warehouse arrived on or before Election Day. pic.twitter.com/Ajlhhcjhpe

— Megan Guza (@meganguzaTrib) November 6, 2020

“We want every legal vote to be counted, but what we don’t want is fraud ballots to be counted,” he said, noting specifically ballots that arrived after Election Day, ballots without postmarks and ballots without matching signatures. “There were a lot of problems with the mail-ins as it was, and now who knows what’s going on.”

There have been no known legitimate allegations of fraud in Allegheny County or the other 66 counties statewide. The ballots being counted in the warehouse Friday all arrived on or before Election Day or were cast in person.

Pennsylvania will accept mail-in ballots received after Election Day through 5 p.m. Friday so long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day. The U.S. Supreme Court a week before the election shot down a bid by state Republicans to expedite their request to quash that extension.

No ballots that have arrived since Election Day have been counted. A total of 1,045 arrived as of 5 p.m. Friday, and 947 met the state’s criteria for counting. On Friday, 113 arrived, and 64 were eligible. On Thursday, 370 ballots that were received Thursday, 358 of which met the state’s criteria.

Pennsylvania counties were instructed by Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar to segregate those ballots received after Election Day, pending a possible ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Earlier Friday, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania filed an emergency application with the court to ensure those ballots received between 8 p.m. Tuesday and 5 p.m. Friday are properly segregated, writing that it was “unclear” if every county’s board of elections was doing so.

Later in the day, Justice Samuel Alito issued an order requiring it. The order reinforces the guidance provided by the secretary of State in late October.

Alito said that none of the parties have been able to verify that the individual counties are complying with the guidance. He asked any response from the parties to be filed by 2 p.m. on Saturday.

Protest, counter-protest

About two dozen supporters of the “Stop the Steal” accusations gathered later in the afternoon outside the City-County Building in Downtown Pittsburgh.

Chris Eryx, of Robinson, organized the group at the City County Building to “protest the stealing of the election.” Eryx said he believed there was widespread voter fraud in Allegheny County.

“If you count the legal ballots and if you have transparency, Trump wins in a landslide,” he said, claiming that a portion of the mail-in ballots were fraudulent. No evidence of voter fraud has been presented, and observers from both parties have been inside the warehouse during the tallying process. No ballots received after Election Day have been counted.

The group was preparing to move back to the election warehouse when they were met with anti-racism and anti-police brutality protesters.

Several tense moments ensued as some supporters of each side clashed loudly, some shouting into each other’s faces.

Pittsburgh police and Allegheny County Sheriff’s Deputies broke up the more heated shouting matches, and they eventually formed a line dividing the two sides that ran the length of the building. There appeared to be more law enforcement officers on the scene than activists from either side.

Two of each side’s most vocal demonstrators — Eryx and Gam Craft — spent the better part of an hour arguing their positions from their respective sides of the police line. Though loud, the interaction remained relatively civil between the two. Both sides dispersed shortly after 3 p.m. with Eryx and Craft agreeing to go for coffee to further discuss their differences.

Julia Felton contributed to this report