The tight race for state representative in the 117th District will draw more attention to the Luzerne County Election Board’s upcoming primary election adjudication process.
With all 186 precincts reporting, unofficial results show an eight-vote difference between the two Republican state representative contenders — incumbent Mike Cabell (4,715) and Jamie Walsh (4,723).
However, these results don’t include an undetermined number of ballots that must be reviewed and then accepted or rejected during board adjudication, such as provisional ballots cast at the polls and mail ballots that were flagged for various reasons.
The 117th District Democratic nomination also is of interest heading into adjudication.
No Democratic candidate appeared on the ballot in that race, and a total 313 write-in votes were cast.
A write-in contender would need 300 votes to secure the Democratic nomination — a state law threshold based on the number of petition signatures that would have been required to get on the primary ballot, said county Assistant Solicitor Gene Molino.
The tallying of write-in votes typically occurs later in the adjudication process, possibly starting Tuesday.
What to expect
Adjudication begins at 9 a.m. Friday on the third floor of the county’s Penn Place Building at 20 N. Pennsylvania Ave. in Wilkes-Barre and is scheduled to run until 4 p.m. It will then resume next week for as long as needed.
This public process starts with a review of all mail ballots with deficiencies, including those missing required outer envelope voter signatures and inner secrecy envelopes.
The volunteer, five-citizen election board has formalized and expanded the entire adjudication process to make it more transparent and understandable.
After describing each mail ballot defect and the number of impacted ballots, the board asks the solicitor to discuss the relevant state law and make a recommendation. Board members then discuss the matter and accept comments from party representatives before voting on whether to accept or reject ballots.
Provisional ballots cast at the polls also must be checked to verify the voters were registered and did not also vote with a mail ballot. Provisional ballots must be placed in a secrecy envelope and then inserted in an outer envelope. Three signatures — two from the voter and one from the judge of elections — are required on the outer envelope for the vote to count.
Overseas and military ballots also are tallied during adjudication.
Results from ballots accepted in adjudication are periodically uploaded to the county’s online election database at luzernecounty.org so candidates will know the impact on their vote tallies.
After adjudicating issues with paper mail and provisional ballots, the board then focuses on the painstaking process of tallying write-in votes in races where the total number of write-ins could be high enough for someone to secure a seat.
The county also must audit 2% of the ballots cast to verify the voter selections were properly credited.
A final reconciliation also is necessary before the board’s election certification vote to make sure the total number of ballots processed matches the voter count.
Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams has prepared an exhaustive agenda detailing the myriad of issues that will be discussed throughout the adjudication process.
“The board really does go through all these post-election processes that are required with a fine-tooth comb,” Williams said Wednesday. “We spend a lot of time going over each and every ballot.”
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