Explainer: How will votes be counted in Allegheny County?

ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — About 140,000 mail-in ballots are locked up in a cage in a secure building on the North Side. 

These ballots will be counted with high-tech equipment and the old-fashioned way - a person double-checking one envelope at a time.

These mail-in ballots have already gone through a mail sorting machine, organizing each one by precinct.

The job of the sorting machine is to catch every signature.

“We can sort those ballots out that are missing a signature, those ballots we send back to the voter with a letter explaining how to cure, and new return envelopes,” explained David Voye, elections division manager.

Election workers will not begin processing those ballots and turning each one into a vote until 7 a.m. on Tuesday, when polls open.

“At 7 a.m. we will open the cage up, we will first take all the ballots to our 200 employees in the back room, they will make sure it’s accurately dated and signed,” said Chet Harhut, Allegheny County elections deputy manager.

Elections officials say counting votes is a multi-step process.

After checking for date and signature, the mail-in ballot will go to a letter opener. It will be sliced open to expose the ballot, which is in a second, secrecy envelope.

“The ballot needs to be extracted from that inner envelope, flattened out, then it’s taken to the tabulator, and that is how a ballot becomes a vote,” Harhut explained.

Officials gave 11 News the warehouse tour, hoping for full transparency with the counting process. They said they haven’t made any major changes since 2020 and are only trying to streamline everything to go as smoothly as possible.

“We all strive very hard, we try to make our elections as safe and secure as possible,” said Voye. “I really think everybody involved is doing a really good job. I don’t think we could get any better.

Election officials are still waiting for direction when it comes to mail-in ballots with incorrect dates, after the supreme court’s split decision.

The county law department is working with the state to figure that out. We know only a few days are left to do it. Voters who are concerned that you may have forgotten to put the date or got the date wrong are encouraged to contact your county election board or the department of state.

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