Nearly 2,000 ballots will be added to last week’s election totals after the Board of Elections voted to accept most segregated and provisional ballots.
The board during a public meeting Tuesday unanimously approved a measure to canvass some 1,149 ballots that had been segregated from drop boxes, and ordered those votes be accepted so long as they did not have any disqualifying deficiencies.
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.
All but one of those ballots was ultimately accepted. The sole rejected ballot of the bunch was disqualified because of identifying marks on its secrecy envelope.
The board on Tuesday also voted to accept 25 mail-in and absentee ballots that arrived at the Board of Elections Office in unsealed secrecy envelopes and another 10 that arrived bearing out-of-range dates.
Of 964 provisional ballots cast last week at polling places, the board accepted 808 in full. Another 31 provisional ballots, each cast by a voter who went mistakenly to a polling place other than their own, were partially accepted. The board rejected 125 provisional ballots.
Also rejected were 487 mail-in and absentee votes, each of which arrived with at least one deficiency. Those 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
Board of Elections staff began processing the accepted ballots immediately following Tuesday’s meeting. Those votes along with 44 military and civilian overseas ballots will be reflected in updates to be posted Tuesday and Wednesday to the county’s unofficial election results page.
Media Contact: James O’Malley, 215-348-6414, jtomalley@buckscounty.org