Fayette County finished counting bulk of mail-in ballots
The majority of mail-in ballots for the general election have been counted in Fayette County and workers have turned their attention to sorting through provisional ballots cast Tuesday.
“We’re into the second stage,” said Commissioner Dave Lohr. “In what seemed like a disaster structure of the election, our people stepped up to the plate.”
Lohr said the workers at the Fayette County Election Bureau counted a majority of the mail-in ballots that were returned on Election Day, and finished that count Wednesday night. Thursday, they started tackling 2,000 provisional ballots, which are cast when there was a question about someone’s ability to vote at the polls.
“Our director, our staff and everyone who pitched in was phenomenal,” Lohr said.
Following directions from the Pennsylvania Department of State, ballots that had any issues like missing information have been counted, but segregated from the other mail-in ballots in case the courts intervene and instruct the county to remove those ballots from the count.
“We’ve been doing that before we were instructed to do so,” Lohr said. “We want every vote to be counted, but we want to be very cautious on every move we make.”
The mail-in ballots arriving to the election bureau after 8 p.m. on Tuesday were also segregated and to be counted on Friday.
As of Thursday, Lohr did not know how many ballots have been segregated.