The Bucks County Board of Elections will meet Tuesday to discuss counting a few thousand outstanding votes from last Tuesday’s election.
While the county’s election counting was mostly finished last Wednesday, about 2,615 ballots need to be reviewed. After the review of ballots, the number of votes that will be counted in expected to be lower as some are disqualified.
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County officials said 943 of those ballots are provisional ballots cast at polling places.
On Tuesday, the Bucks County Board of Elections will discuss and determine whether to accept the 943 ballots on a case-by-case basis.
A total of 1,145 mail-in and absentee ballots are considered “segregated.” They were separated at ballot drop boxes for numerous reasons, but the largest reason is because someone deposited more than one ballot in a drop box, which were manned by election staff, officials said.
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“When an individual wrongly deposits more than one ballot, all ballots contained in the drop box at the time of the deposit are segregated. The board will vote whether to include the ballots in the final tally, the Board of Elections said in a statement.
Other types of segregated mail-in/absentee ballots include:
- 273 “naked” ballots, or ballots which arrived without a secrecy envelope
- 127 ballots that were not dated
- 57 ballots with no signature
- 26 “partially naked” ballots, which arrived in unsealed secrecy envelopes
- 25 ballots which arrived in secrecy envelopes bearing identifying marks
- 11 ballots that arrived bearing a date that is out-of-range of the present election
- 8 ballots which were improperly received
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The segregated ballots have various defects, including missing dates, signatures, and secrecy envelopes. They have not been included in the tally released last Wednesday.
“In addition, 168 mail-in/absentee ballots were received which, due to mechanical or technical errors, could not be scanned. Those votes will be processed by hand and reflected in an update to be posted Thursday to the unofficial results page,” officials said.
By law, military and civilian overseas ballots are required to be returned by 5 p.m. Tuesday. They will be counted later.
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Final election results, as is typical, will be certified in the coming weeks.
The Board of Elections will meet 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Bucks County Administration Building in Doylestown Borough.
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