The Lancaster County Board of Elections canceled a hearing scheduled Friday morning that would have considered challenges to the validity of more than 700 overseas ballots after the challenge to them was withdrawn.
Commissioner Ray D’Agostino, the board’s chairman, announced the cancellation Friday at the start of the board’s regular meeting.
The board’s agenda showed that all 723 challenges were filed by Seeran Mizii, a Denver, Pennsylvania, resident. They were among more than 4,300 filed in 14 Pennsylvania counties just before Tuesday’s election.
At the time, it was unknown how close the outcome would be, but the state was crucial to both Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’ respective paths to victory in the Electoral College.
LNP reported that Mizii attended meetings held by PA Fair Elections, a group led by Heather Honey that has advanced numerous false and misleading claims alleging election fraud.
The challenges were part of a broader Republican-aligned push to challenge voter eligibility and ballot procedures, including a lawsuit filed by PA Fair Elections and Republican Congressmen, including U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Lancaster County, seeking to impose tougher verification requirements on overseas voters; and an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent people who made clerical errors on mail-in ballots from being allowed to cast provisional ballots. Both of those efforts were unsuccessful.
At the board’s Friday meeting, city resident John McGrann asked why the board hadn’t disclosed Mizii’s role as the sole challenger earlier. There were more than 700 individual challenges to go through, and amid all the other administrative work for Tuesday’s election, it wasn’t a priority, Solicitor Jackie Pfursich said.
The task ahead
Even though Tuesday’s election is in the rearview mirror, Elections Office staff still have a lot of work to do, Chief Clerk Christa Miller told the Elections Board Friday.
The office has just under 4,000 provisional ballots to evaluate, then count the ones determined to be eligible. It has at least 1,200 overseas and military ballots to count, as well as write-ins. It has a state-mandated audit to complete to ensure the vote was accurately counted, and it could be randomly selected for a second, supplementary audit, too.
Moreover, the U.S. Senate race between Bob Casey and Dave McCormick may be headed for an automatic statewide recount. If that happens, the Elections Office will set up its scanners again and recount every ballot, Miller said.
Everything must be done and the final reconciliation completed in order for the Board of Election to certify the election by the Nov. 25 deadline.
A provisional ballot is cast in certain defined circumstances: when a voter’s eligibility is in doubt, or when procedural issues prevented a mail-in ballot from being properly cast. The Elections Office is tasked with resolving those issues, to confirm voters are indeed eligible and cast only a single vote. Voters are notified if their ballot is being challenged.
The board did its part Friday to keep things moving, officially authorizing the Elections Office to canvass and count mail-in and overseas ballots.
As of Friday, according to the county’s election results dashboard, 287,421 ballots had been cast in Lancaster County out of 365,797 registered voters, a 78.6% turnout.
In terms of raw numbers, that’s more than the 281,375 votes cast in November 2020, the previous record. However, that was out of 354,296 registered voters, so the turnout percentage in 2020 was slightly higher, at 79.4%.
