Waiting on final voting results in 31 Allegheny County precincts
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Thousands of registered voters made their way to the polls on Tuesday for Pennsylvania's Primary election.
In Washington County, the election board reported that 37.9% of voters were registered throughout 180 precincts. That amounts to about 47,443 votes among the 124,953 registered voters.
In Westmoreland County, online data shows 35.4% voted.
In Allegheny County, 286,925 votes have been counted so far of the 787,781 registered voters, but not all the results have been uploaded, according to election officials. They said the results from 31 precincts still need to be uploaded.
Each precinct receives two memory sticks. One of those is to be returned to the regional reporting center once the polls close. Another memory stick is to be secured inside the scanners in the polling place.
The county reports that 30 precincts accidentally locked both memory sticks in the scanners, making them unable to upload the results Tuesday night.
Another precinct reported a memory card failed. The county said they now have to wait until the sealed memory stick is turned into the regional reporting center in order to upload the results.
Election officials said if the other stick should also fail, paper ballots will be rescanned.
Another issue was that some precincts reported running out of ballots. Chris Bonneau, a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said it happened due to high voter turnout.
"This year though, we have in Pennsylvania anyway, elections for the U.S. Senate, where control of the Senate could be at stake, as well as for governor. And given some of the issues that may be coming back to the states like abortion rights, voting rights and so on, the Office of Governor becomes extremely important as well. And so, those kinds of factors will motivate higher turnout," Bonneau said
Allegheny County election officials said final results from Tuesday's election could take until Friday.