Now for some super fun stats from today’s Allegheny County Board of Elections meeting!

Let’s start with something different: ballots that WON’T be counted. They include around 2K naked ballots, 439 incomplete ballots and 225 duplicates.

Elections Division Manager David Voye: “These would have been people that applied (for a mail-in) and either got antsy and came into the office and asked for a duplicate or in the last weekend if the satellite offices cane in and applied and we processed those as a duplicate.”

Ballots that remain to be counted: ~17K provisional ballots and about 7K of the 29K that had to be segregated because of that printing mishap I’m always talking about. There are a few hundred military/overseas ballots left (that deadline was today).

There are 947 mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day but received after 8pm 11/3 and before 5pm 11/6. The state says those ballots are eligible but directed counties to separate them in case the Supreme Court takes up a Republican challenge.

The main event was in regard to 2,349 ballots that are otherwise eligible but did not have a date written on them.

“They applied on time, received their ballot, voted their ballot, returned them on time with their signature, their printed name, their address — the only thing they’re missing is their date,” said county solicitor Andrew Szefi.

Cont: “they were received timely and our ... ballot sorting machine imprints a date received on each envelope as they’re scanned.”

“The legal principle at issue here is the Elections Code should always be construed to as to favor enfranchisement over disenfranchisement,” Szefi said. “What we have here is essentially a technicality that we dine want voters to get disenfranchised with.”

He likened it to the fact that Elections Code says voters shall use blue or back ink, but that’s been ruled to be a technicality that shouldn’t disenfranchise voters “even though it says ‘shall.’”

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, the board chair, voted in favor of counting the votes, as did board member & county councilwoman Bethany Hallam. Board member & county councilman Sam DeMarco voted against. “I’m sorry, but no,” he said, citing the law as written.

Those ballots will remain segregated until the deadline to appeal has passed or all appeals have been exhausted, whichever comes first.

In total, 792,315 votes cast in the county, which is a turnout of about 74.5% (!!) ~364K in-person votes vs. ~338K mail-in ballots.

Lastly, here’s a link to approximately 33 pages of public comments that were submitted via email. This is a publicly available pdf. https://alleghenycounty.us/uploadedFiles/Allegheny_Home/Dept-Content/Elections/Docs/Public%20Comments_11-10-20.pdf