Fayette elections officials approve recount in GOP commissioners race
With little fanfare during a quick three-minute meeting Thursday afternoon, Fayette County’s elections board voted to recount the results in six precincts from the May primary that were being challenged in court.
The recount will begin at 8:30 a.m. Monday and be held in a specialized room in the elections bureau that can be viewed by candidates and their representatives as the elections staff goes through each individual ballot and displays them to observers while tabulating the results.
The count will focus only on in-person and mail-in ballots for the GOP commissioners race in Connellsville Township, Dunbar Borough, South Connellsville Borough, the third precinct in Georges Township and precincts one and three in Bullskin Township. It’s not known how long the process will take, although elections board solicitor Sheryl Heid said after Thursday’s meeting that they’re hopeful it will be completed relatively quickly due to the limited scope of the recount.
Following the meeting, Heid showed a reporter the room inside the elections office at 2 W. Main St. in Uniontown where the recount will be conducted, and explained how the process will unfold. Tables will be lined up near an observation window with one worker looking at each ballot and announcing the voter’s choice with another worker tabulating the results while a third staffer holds the ballot up for people to view.
Heid said the observation room has a capacity of 15 people, so election officials are asking that only the four Republican candidates for county commissioner and their representatives attend. Members of the media will also be able to observe the process.
Fayette County Recorder of Deeds Jon Marietta Jr. is spearheading the challenge after he ran for Board of Commissioners in the Republican primary on May 16, but finished in third place behind incumbents David Lohr and Scott Dunn. Marietta lost the nomination to Dunn by 121 votes, and petitioners who filed on his behalf argued that “bleed-through” on the paper ballots could have caused counting errors by the precinct scanning equipment. County elections officials previously stated that the Dominion scanning machines are able to correctly tabulate a voter’s selection despite ink bleed-through on the ballots.
Still, the petitioners challenged 22 precincts after the primary, although only six had survived the legal process when Senior Judge John F. Wagner Jr. ordered the elections office last week to turn over copies of affected ballots, along with the digital “cast vote record” that records the results. County elections officials said they consider those to be “contents of the ballot box,” which are not meant to be made public under state law. In response to Wagner’s order, the elections board notified Marietta’s attorney, Greg Teufel, that they would agree to perform the recount in order to avoid producing the discovery documents.
A hearing had been scheduled for next week for Wagner to decide whether a recount should happen in the six precincts being challenged. However, after both sides agreed to the recount, the senior judge filed a consent order Tuesday making it official.
The elections board was required under the state’s Sunshine Law to hold the special meeting Thursday to ratify its decision. No one from the public spoke during the meeting, which was attended in-person by board members Mark Rowan and John Kopas, while fellow board member Robert Lesnick and Elections Bureau Director MaryBeth Kuznik attended through video conferencing.
Teufel previously said that he would likely request a countywide recount if the results in the six precincts deviate from the election night results.
The elections board certified every election except the Republican commissioners race during a special meeting July 27 – more than two months after the primary. There is now an urgency to finalize the GOP nominees for county commissioner with the Nov. 7 general election less than 12 weeks away.