Luzerne County Election Board members will start the general election adjudication process Friday. Shown, from left, are board members Richard Nardone, Denise Williams, Audrey Serniak and Patrick Castellani. Kathryn Roth, the remaining member of the volunteer citizen board, was not at the county courthouse when this photo was taken.
File photo
Luzerne County’s Election Board will convene at 10 a.m. Friday to determine if 878 provisional and flagged mail ballots can and should be counted.
Known as adjudication, this proceeding will be held publicly in courtroom A on the third floor of the county’s Penn Place Building at 20 N. Pennsylvania Ave. in Wilkes-Barre.
For a mail ballot to be counted, each voter must place their ballot inside a blank white secrecy envelope, seal it, put that envelope inside an outer envelope and then sign and date the outer envelope.
According to the bipartisan, five-citizen election board, it must review 535 ballots because they have deficiencies, including:
• Missing signatures
• No dates or dates that fall outside the period in which the ballots were issued to voters and due back in the election bureau, such as a voter mistakenly using a birth date
• No secrecy envelope or a secrecy envelope not fully sealed
• Names or other identifying marks on secrecy envelopes
There are another 343 provisional ballots that must be reviewed.
Provisional ballots are marked by hand at polling places and reviewed last so the board can verify if that voter is properly registered and did not also submit a mail ballot.
These ballots also must be placed in a secrecy envelope, which is then inserted in an outer envelope. Three signatures are required on the outer envelope for the vote to count. The voter must sign twice along with the judge of elections.
This election’s adjudication will be more structured and formal due to a new procedure the election board approved Oct. 18.
In the past, it was challenging for public observers to figure out what the board was deciding at any given time because board members mostly conversed with each other, calling upon a solicitor as needed.
Board Chairwoman Denise Williams said she modeled the new procedure after one she viewed online in Bucks County that was clear and educational for anyone watching.
Under the new procedure, the election bureau and board solicitor will “walk the board/public step by step through each category of ballots for adjudication.”
The bureau must state the number of ballots in each category before the solicitor cites provisions of the state Election Code and case law that apply to the category at hand and makes a recommendation on how they should be handled.
After board discussion, authorized party representatives will have an opportunity to provide input or arguments.
Board members will then vote whether to accept or reject some or all votes, with the option to table a vote if more information is needed.
The public also will have an opportunity to comment on the adjudication at the start of Friday’s session or provide general comment at its conclusion, the agenda said.
Adjudication will resume Monday to focus on the tally of write-in votes.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.
