Allegheny Co. Board Of Elections Votes 2-1 To Certify General Election Results
By: KDKA-TV News Staff
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The Board of Elections in Allegheny County has voted 2-1 to certify the results of the Nov. 3 general election.
All 67 counties across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are certifying their election results today.
In a meeting that lasted about 10 minutes Monday morning, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, who is the Elections Board chairman, and County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam, both Democrats, voted "yes." County Councilman Samuel DeMarco, a Republican, voted "no."
There are five categories of votes which were not part of today's certification process due to legal challenges.
Not every vote was part of this. There are five categories of votes not part of the certification process today. More in next tweet.
— Chris Hoffman (@NewsmanChris) November 23, 2020
In all, there are approximately 3,300 votes that are part of court cases.
There are 254 challenged provisional ballots, 326 undated mail-in ballots in the 45th state senatorial district, 1,996 undated mail-in ballots outside that district, 708 mail-in ballots postmarked and received after 8 p.m. on Election Day and before 6 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 6. There are also 23 mail-in ballots that arrived during that same time period but have no postmark.
Board members will have to reconvene and certify those ballots at a different time.
Allegheny County Board of Elections certifies votes cast for the November 3, 2020 general election which were not part of any legal challenge. The vote was 2-1 with Council Member DeMarco voting against.
— Allegheny County (@Allegheny_Co) November 23, 2020
The board said it received 43 emails for public comments Monday. Of those emails, 19 of them were asking them to not certify the election results. Five urged them to certify the vote as they did Monday morning and 11 were complaints.
In the approximately 250 provisional ballots under legal challenge, Allegheny County leaders are appealing a decision by a Commonwealth Court to not count them. They are asking the State Supreme Court to overturn the decisions and allow the votes to be counted.
The issue in the provisional ballots was voters not properly signing the outer envelopes. In most of these cases, voters signed one line, but not the other.
The Commonwealth Court ruled that unless both lines were signed, the votes would not count.
Allegheny County is arguing that a technicality shouldn't come before someone's right to vote.
According to the board, they will discuss improvements to future elections during a sit-down meeting within the next few weeks.
