Agreement reached over incorrect ballots sent to voters in Allegheny County

ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — A lawyer for Republican congressional candidates Sean Parnell and Luke Negron said an agreement has been reached over nearly 29,000 incorrect mail-in ballots sent to Allegheny County voters.

The Republican candidates and the Allegheny County Board of Elections agreed on a process for handling the wrong ballots, including a detailed plan to ensure every vote is properly counted.

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The plan involves counting the corrected ballots for each voter and counting “only those portions of an Initial Ballot for those public offices that the individual voting that Initial Ballot would have been eligible to vote for in the individual’s proper election district.”

It also guarantees that the initial and corrected ballots are held in designated sections of the locked ballot room.

This comes on the heels of new, corrected ballots being sent out. They have an orange strip on them.

The agreement states “the board will segregate ballots into three categories: voters who returned only a corrected ballot, voters who returned only an initial ballot and voters who returned both.”

According to the settlement:

• If a voter returned only a corrected ballot, it will be counted according to state law.
• If a voter returned both the wrong and corrected ballot, the corrected ballot will be the only one counted.
• If a voter returned just the wrong ballot, the votes will be counted only for the race they would be eligible to vote for -- such as state or national offices.

Parnell said this has been an absolute fiasco.

“Look, it is absolutely a mess,” Parnell said. “What I’m asking is that those ballots be separated to ensure people vote one time and for the candidates that actually represent them.”

The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Tuesday.

On Friday, a judge denied a request for poll watchers at Allegheny County’s satellite election offices.

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