Nov 17, 2023 By Mike Jones 3 min read

Greene County certified its Nov. 7 election Thursday morning, hours after a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed this week by a losing candidate attempting to force a special election for all races.

The elections board voted unanimously to approve the results after officials finalized counting write-in ballots, which was the final step in tabulating the votes.

“We’re ready,” outgoing Elections Director Eric Finch told the board during a brief meeting to certify the results.

This year’s election was marred by multiple mistakes on the mail-in ballots that forced county officials to recall the first batch sent out and then scramble to notify voters about an error on the second set.

The first issue involved all mail-in ballots asking voters across the county to vote in the two magistrate races regardless if they lived in that district. All of those ballots were either recalled or weren’t counted if they had been returned, and elections officials sent out another batch fixing that error. However, the second batch erroneously told people to vote for up to three candidates for county commissioner when they were only supposed to vote for two.

County officials spent the final days leading up to the election attempting to notify voters of the mistake and either give them the option to “cure” their mail-in ballot at the elections office or vote on a provisional ballot at their polling place on Election Day.

Out of the nearly 1,500 mail-in ballots cast, 548 had “overvotes” with people selecting three candidates in the commissioners race. Those votes were not counted in that race, although it did not appear to affect that election.

But a candidate in another race sued Monday attempting to require a special election across the board due to the problems. Republican Donna Russo-Zwerver, who lost the Waynesburg mayoral race to Democrat Lynn Bussey by a margin of 321 to 227, filed the lawsuit in Greene County Court of Common Pleas claiming that none of the results should be accepted with the number of errors throughout the election.

Judge Jeffry Grimes dismissed the lawsuit Thursday morning – about two hours before the elections board meeting – since there were “no other petitioners named nor affidavits included” in the lawsuit, which did not meet the statutory requirements of having at least three challengers per petition for a recount in an individual precinct.

“That has been addressed by the court and dismissed,” said Commission Chairman Mike Belding, who also leads the elections board.

But that doesn’t mean the problems are over for Greene County’s election.

County Register & Recorder Donna Tharp, who is a Democrat, indicated Thursday that she is keeping her options open after losing reelection to Republican Tammy Brookover by fewer than 300 votes. It’s unclear whether the recall of the original mail-in ballots may have affected that race because it’s not known how many people sent back their original ballots but did not send back the second one, which was counted.

“Yes, there definitely is a concern,” Tharp said.

Tharp said she and others are reviewing the situation and she’ll make a decision later on what action, if any, she plans to take.