Allegheny County hired Mail Direct an Ohio-based company to print and mail their mail-in and absentee ballots. The company screwed up 29,00 of those ballots.

New correct ballots were printed and mailed out. The challenge is to ensure that no one returned both the bad and the corrected ballot and then had both counted.

BTW, that company really screwed up with other counties as well missing the promised delivery dates by two or more weeks.

AND....... did I mention the owners are big Trump supporters and as of this summer had a big Trump 2020 flag flying at their business.

Atticus

(15,124 posts)

11. 29K held up by GOP lawsuit---agreement to delay count until tomorrow. The other 6K are heavily

Reply to mobeau69 (Original post)

Thu Nov 5, 2020, 01:03 PM

Nov 2020

creased ballots that must be tallied manually because scanners won't accept them.

GemDigger

(4,305 posts)

12. Let's remember that many of these people working the ballots have been on the job for many

Reply to mobeau69 (Original post)

Thu Nov 5, 2020, 01:04 PM

Nov 2020

hours for many days. I have put in a 16 hour day and several 12 hour days counting ballots (in a 60,000 person county) and after one or two of those days people get burnt out and need a few hours to recoup.

Also remember these places are counting millions and millions of votes. Covid has hampered many counting districts and new people were needed and that slows them down a bit.

Be patient with them. Everyone should volunteer at least once in their life to know how elections work.

uppityperson

(115,677 posts)

14. Here's an explanation.

Reply to mobeau69 (Original post)

Thu Nov 5, 2020, 01:07 PM

Nov 2020

Link to tweet

Chris Potter
@CPotterPgh
Here I am going to try to address some confusion about why Allegheny County is not going to begin counting 30,000+ ballots until tomorrow. People are going bonkers about this, or castigating hard-working employees on no sleep, and it is wrong. (thread)
8:45 AM · Nov 5, 2020·Twitter Web App
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Chris Potter
@CPotterPgh
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@CPotterPgh
The ballots in question require special attention. The vast majority -- up to 29,000 -- involve a situation where a vendor sent the wrong ballots to voters, and had to reissue new ballots with the correct races. The challenge there is now voters have 2 ballots, one w/wrong races.
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Chris Potter
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So you have to give those ballots special scrutiny to make sure that a) people don't vote twice, and b) if they just send in the old one, they don't vote in races they aren't eligible for. So you can't just scan them with the rest.
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Chris Potter
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Other ballots in the pot include those that don't scan for whatever reason -- it's like when the ATM won't process the amount of the check you want to deposit, so you have to bring it into the bank office itself.
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Chris Potter
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When ballots require special scrutiny, the county records the vote through a return board whose members are sworn in for that purpose. The board reviews the results tallied up by election workers after polls close, but also addresses provisional ballots, military ballots, etc.
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Chris Potter
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... And the board's members are set to be sworn in tomorrow, the Friday after E-day. I am told by the election department's solicitor that this date is a requirement of the Election Code.
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Chris Potter
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There is nothing nefarious here: Be advised, Trump supporters, that county's GOP chair is comfortable with process. Nor is this a case of shiftless public workers taking a day off. This is longstanding process, and the county made clear how 29k would be handled well before E-day
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Chris Potter
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This has been the most complicated election of my life, made worse here by a vendor error that sent the wrong ballots to thousands of voters in a hugely contentious environment. People are taking time to try to do it right. Don't make it harder

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