HARRISBURG (TNS) — Officials in Butler County will complete the first phase of their review of the 2020 election on Thursday, nearly two years after the election took place.
The Pennsylvania Department of State called Butler County’s efforts a “waste of time and taxpayer resources.”
The department, in an official statement, said Butler County already participated in statistical and risk-limiting audits of the 2020 election run by the department that found no statistical abnormalities in Butler County or across the state.
”It’s been nearly two years since the 2020 election and continued efforts to question the results and ultimately the will of Pennsylvania voters only contribute to sowing distrust in our system and further the dangerous conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election,” the department added in its official statement.
A team of seven elections staff and judges of elections on Thursday will complete a hand recount of about 600 mail ballots from a precinct in Butler City. This is the first of three precincts that the county plans to review, as part of an effort to ensure election integrity and to determine the time it takes to conduct such a recount.
While the Department of State oversees elections and official recounts, each county individually manages their elections. Because of this, Butler County has the authority to complete such a review of its 2020 ballots — although the time period to take any legal action based on the review’s results is “long over,” the Department of State added.
Butler County Commissioner Leslie Osche said the state’s official audits are confusing for an average citizen to understand. By picking three random precincts to review, the county hopes to open the process to the public and to calculate how long a hand count would take.
The review is conducted like this: A county elections staff member reads out the results from every race on each ballot. Another six people tally each vote. Then the ballots are re-scanned by the county’s ballot scanner to confirm they have the same count. So far, these counts have been the same, Ms. Osche said. Elections staff are completing about 100 ballots per hour.
Once officials finish the count of the Butler City precinct on Thursday, the county will compare its results with the 2020 election results, Osche added.
Osche said the 2020 election was a “perfect storm” of challenges, noting the COVID-19 pandemic, the first election using the new no-excuse mail voting option and the backdrop of the highly-contested presidential election.
”I don’t know how many more challenges you could throw at an election,” Osche added.
In the three elections since, Osche said the county has found better practices to make it easier for officials to administer the election. For example, the county now sorts mail ballots by precinct, so the mail ballot results will go live at the same time as the in-person results, which should show a more accurate picture of the vote. Democratsvote by mail at higher rates than Republicans in Pennsylvania.
This review also serves as an opportunity to show groups that want counties to count all ballots by hand what an awesome undertaking that would be, Osche added.
The leader of Audit the Vote PA, a conservative election integrity group that advertises conspiracies about the safety and security of the state’s elections, said last week in the group’s Telegram channel that the group’s nearly 13,000 subscribers should advocate for counties to hand count all of its ballots.
”Stick the machines in the closet and hand count the paper ballots,” said Toni Shuppe, the leader of the group. “Every County Commissioner along with their corresponding election board can choose to table the machines for the upcoming November election. That one simple move doesn’t violate any law or election code statute and will immediately increase transparency. Just do it.”
There are 8,749,774 registered voters in Pennsylvania as of Monday, according to Department of State data.
