A recount that could help determine the winners of eight York County elections began Monday, Nov. 13, after an election board meeting where numerous residents scrutinized the county’s Election Day decisions. County election staff discovered a technical oversight the afternoon before Election Day that allowed a single voter to cast multiple votes for a single candidate in races where more than one candidate was elected. The oversight, which was the result of a programming error by county staff, potentially impacted eight contested races, including the York County Court of Common Pleas judges race. About 20 volunteers, all county employees, began counting votes in those races Monday morning in the basement of the county’s administrative building, looking for instances where a single voter cast two votes for the same candidate. Those instances will be referred to as an “overvote” for that candidate, according to Nikki Suchanic, director of the county’s election department.
The number of overvotes will be discussed during the Board of Election’s preliminary certification meeting, scheduled for noon on Monday, Nov. 20, Suchanic said.
Marian Schneider, president of Verified Voting, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization advocating for accuracy and transparency in elections, said the machine error should have been caught earlier with proper logic and accuracy testing.
County spokesman Mark Walters said there was testing, but it wasn’t caught. Suchanic declined to comment.
Full Article: York County election recount begins as commissioners face scrutiny.