Allegheny County officials preview Election Day tabulating process

In a show of transparency, Allegheny County election officials opened up its warehouse on Pittsburgh’s North Side to the media Thursday to detail the process in which in-person and mail-in votes will be counted on Election Day on Tuesday.

Election Division manager David Voye showed media members the bags containing equipment that will be sent to the county’s more than 1,300 voting precincts. Those bag contain keys, passwords, and a seal that is applied to voting machines so no voting can be done after all legitimate voting is completed.

County officials also showcased a large, locked cage where valid mail-in ballots are kept until they can be counted on Election Day, as well as the mail-sorting machine used to check if mail-in ballots contain signatures and apply timestamps to the ballots.

“We all strive to work very hard and to make Allegheny County voting as safe and secure as possible,” Voye said.

This tour comes as there has been heightened interest in the voting process, largely driven by conservative activist groups who continue to claim debunked theories that elections in Pennsylvania are illegitimate.

One area of particular focus from activists is no-excuse, mail-in voting. Many conservatives now want to repeal that, even though Republican elected officials supported its creation in 2019.

Regardless, mail-in voting has drawn criticism from some because it is used much more by Democratic voters. It typically takes much longer to tabulate those votes compared to those cast in-person, which usually results in Democrats gaining and sometimes overtaking Republican candidates days after Election Day.

However, officials said that likely won’t be the case with Allegheny County’s results.

State law prohibits any election workers in Pennsylvania from counting any of the mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day.

Allegheny County election division has invited media into its warehouse on Pittsburgh’s North Side to show what the process for counting ballots on Election Day. Here is the mail-in ballot sorter in action. pic.twitter.com/XZ7Kg0mrUL

— Ryan Deto (@RyanDeto) November 3, 2022

Chet Harhut is in charge of the mail-in voting counting for the county. He anticipates having virtually all mail-in ballots counted and tabulated shortly after polls close at 8 p.m. on Election Day.

He said the county has received about 142,000 mail-in ballots as of Thursday, and they anticipate receiving between 150,000 to 160,000 by Tuesday.

“Allegheny County puts as much resources as possible into the mail-in count,” Harhut said.

Some mail-in ballots set aside

Despite Allegheny County’s success in quickly counting mail-in ballots, there will likely be a small percentage that won’t be able to be counted on Election Day, thanks to a court order.

Mail-in ballots that lack a correct date on the declaration envelope but are otherwise received on time have been ordered to be sequestered and not counted by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Voye said they are awaiting direction on what to do with those ballots.

Candidate representatives and media will be given access to observe parts of the warehouse on Election Day, starting at 6:40 a.m. Media and representatives must be credentialed by Allegheny County beforehand, and officials said that candidates representatives have already started that process.

These pre-approved visitors will go through metal detectors, have their bags searched by hand, and have to show identification.

Poll watchers are not allowed inside the warehouse, Voye said. Poll watchers are only allowed to observe polling places.

Candidate representatives will be sequestered to a section of the warehouse, where they can watch election workers assigned to recreate ballots that were damaged. Harhut said sometimes ballots get damaged in transit or people spill coffee on them, which means they can’t be scanned properly by counting machines.

Election workers then take the ballots and then input their information in machines that recreate new ballots, so they can be scanned. The whole process is in very close proximity to where candidate representatives are present.

For any in-person voting irregularities, Voye said that each polling precinct contains multiple redundancies to ensure vote counts are accurate.

For example, after polls are closed, poll workers have four print copies of the voting results of that precinct. Two of those are returned to the election warehouse, one is taped up to the door of the polling place, and the last is kept by the minority election inspector, which they retain for at least one week.

Voye said all this process has been the same for the last few years in Allegheny County.