The votes may have been cast in Tuesday’s general election, but questions remain for many Carbon County candidates, officials and voters after an error in the vote tallying system Tuesday night caused significant problems with the final vote tallies that were sent out.

On Friday, a number of candidates in various races, as well as various residents spoke out at the Carbon County Election Board’s meeting to begin the official canvassing that will allow the county to certify the vote.

“What I can tell you is the voters don’t have confidence in this process,” Linda Christman of Towamensing Township told the board. “I’m happy we have gone to a paper ballot so we can do a recount … but voter confidence has to be restored, especially going into the presidential election.”

At the end of the meeting and after much discussion, the board unanimously voted to do a complete hand count audit, meaning the county will look at each paper ballot to do another tabulation of all votes cast, beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday.

In addition, Dominion Voting, the company the county purchased the new paper ballot voting systems from, will bring in a high speed scanner to also rescan all ballots to verify that the process isn’t flawed.

Carbon County has 20 days from the start of canvassing to finish the process and verify the votes of the election.

Chairman speaks

Commissioner William O’Gurek, chairman of the election board, had already voiced his concerns over the tally Thursday at the commissioners’ meeting after an executive session with the state and Dominion.

He said at the beginning of the meeting that in his 16 years in office, this was the craziest election board meeting that he had participated in.

O’Gurek again said the numbers released Tuesday night were in fact inaccurate and that Dominion said the numbers released Wednesday morning were accurate, but he still had many reservations to that accuracy.

He cited one race for the clerk of courts position, where Tyra Boni defeated the current clerk, Fran Heaney, by 126 votes.

He showed the summary report that was issued on Wednesday morning, which showed a total of 15,394 votes were cast in that race. Of that number, O’Gurek said you subtract the 566 under votes and over votes, votes where people either didn’t vote or voted for both candidates and canceled out their vote altogether without first fixing it, to get a new total vote count for the race of 14,828.

“When you see the totals and add up the totals for those two candidates and the 16 write-ins, it comes to 14,470, which is a difference of 358 votes,” O’Gurek said. “I need to know where those 358 votes are that didn’t go to either candidate, are not recorded as under votes or over votes but are obviously missing from the 15,394 that were cast that day. That shakes me.”

Candidates speak

Commissioner candidate Bob Jacobs, who came in fourth on Tuesday for the three-person board, spoke about his concerns over the new process and reiterated that he felt a new count should be completed.

He questioned the information that had been distributed without a disclaimer about the inaccuracies Tuesday night after it was known that there was a problem.

He also questioned the manual inputting that was completed overnight to get the new figures Wednesday morning.

“I did not hear there was any checks and balances in there to determine that it was done twice to determine the total would come out the same for each tally,” Jacobs said. “So already at night when you are exhausted and you are entering numbers manually, that’s where errors happen. So I’m concerned that the information that has been sent … may not be complete at this point.”

He also said there were many issues at the precincts both on the training part of the election poll workers, as well as other problems.

Commissioner-elect Chris Lukasevich, who was elected to his first term Tuesday, asked if there is any reason to believe that there were votes cast on Election Day that were not reflected in the final numbers on Wednesday morning.

O’Gurek said no, but that is based on the information Dominion provided to the county.

Joy Beers, current Lehighton School Board director, questioned the under votes for the school district race, where more than 7,000 under votes were recorded.

A voter could have voted for up to five people in that race.

“While it’s possible that an individual person only voted for three people when they could vote for five, it is highly improbable,” she said.

She questioned the overall number for that race since there are a significant number of write-ins for the board as well.

Current county prothonotary Joann Behrens, who lost to newcomer Kayla Semmel, questioned the use of Sharpie markers, which bled through on the ballots.

O’Gurek said Dominion, which recommended the county use the Sharpies, said that even though the Sharpies bled through, there was nothing on the reverse side of that ballot that was programmed to pick up incidental marks.

Election process reviewed

After David Bradley of Franklin Township questioned about poll workers removing ballots from the secured machines, county elections director Lisa Dart explained the process that should have taken place.

Poll workers were to open the machines when the write-in ballot bag was full and band the write-in ballots and place them back into the machine labeled write-in and resecure the box.

Bradley said that he witnessed one poll worker removing the write-ins and placing them on a table outside of the secured machines.

Carole Walbert of Jim Thorpe asked for clarification on under votes and over votes and why it was necessary to report.

O’Gurek said it was pertinent information that provides checks and balances to get the number of votes candidates can get.

She then questioned if the machines were rejecting ballots for over votes.

Dart said that the scanner did reject them and stated there is an over vote. The poll worker then should have given the voter the option to fill out a new ballot. In some cases, it appears voters cast the ballot as is without first fixing the over vote, negating their vote in that particular race.

Sarina Berlow, judge of election in the 48th district in Palmerton, she said there may have been an issue with educating the poll workers on casting votes on the machine.

She said her poll tried to explain to the voters when an over vote happened and then gave the voter a new ballot and voided the old ballot.

“This needs to be a point of education for poll workers,” Berlow said.

Moving forward

Under the election code, Carbon County must now swear in a total of 10 workers under the jurisdiction of the commissioners’ office to complete the hand count.

Those workers include the election office, as well as any others who are willing to complete the hand count.

They will begin at 9 a.m. today in the elections office and continue until 2 p.m.

Dominion will bring in the high-speed scanner Tuesday to scan the ballots, and the hand count will continue from 8:30 to 4:30 daily until it is complete.

The high-speed scanner report will then be issued once that becomes available and will be compared to the hand count once completed, O’Gurek said.

After the canvassing is completed, the county elections board will then reconvene the meeting to review the findings and certify the vote.

Looking into the future, O’Gurek said that he would like to recommend to his successors about not releasing any election data on election night until all 51 precincts are recorded.