The Bucks County Board of Elections met Tuesday to discuss segregated and provisional ballots from last week’s election.
During their public meeting at the Bucks County Administration Building, the Board of Elections voted to accept the majority of ballots, while disqualifying some that were not in line with election laws.
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Out of 964 provisional ballots cast in-person last Tuesday, 808 were accepted by the Board of Elections. Thirty one other provisional ballots from voters who mistakenly went to the wrong polling place were partially accepted, and 125 were rejected.
The Board of Elections voted to accept 1,148 mail-in or absentee ballots that were segregated in drop boxes. One ballot that was rejected because it had “identifying marks on its secrecy envelope.”
“Those ballots had been separated from others after incidents in which voters placed one or more ballots in addition to their own inside a ballot drop box. When this occurred, Board of Elections staff temporarily locked the drop box and segregated all ballots inside,” the Board of Elections said in a statement.
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Board of Elections Chairman Bob Harvie said the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office was alerted that there were six incidents of someone dropping more than one ballot without proper authorization, but investigations found none of the incidents were due to confirmed criminal intent.
Additionally, the Board of Elections rejected 487 mail-in and absentee ballots that had at least one deficiency. The rejected ballots included:
- 272 “naked” ballots, or ballots which arrived without a secrecy envelope
- 126 ballots that were not dated
- 56 ballots with no signature
- 24 ballots that arrived in secrecy envelopes with identifying marks
- 9 ballots that were improperly received
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During their meeting, the Board of Elections, which is comprised of all three county commissioners, accepted 25 mail-in and absentee ballots that showed up with unsealed secrecy envelopes. Ten showed up with the wrong date listed by voters.
Credit: County of Bucks
Board of Election Director Thomas Freitag said some of the ballots did not have the date it was filled out, but instead had the voter’s birth date or the wrong year.
Freitag was quick to note that the election code does not specifically state which date a voter needs to provide.
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First Assistant County Solicitor Amy Fitzpatrick told the Board of Elections that there was a drop in the number of voters who did not date their ballots, as required by law. The number for the recent general election was .02 percent.
Board of Elections member and county Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo again called for the state legislature to pass a bill that would give counties advance time to begin counting mail-in and absentee ballots. The current law allows for counting to start at 8 p.m. on election night, which leads to delays in getting vote tallies out.
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Harvie said the delay of getting nearly all votes counted could be avoided if election officials were able to pre-canvas mail-in and absentee ballots.
A small number of overseas and military ballots still need to be counted.
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