The Pennsylvania countdown is over and the results are clear: the vote count was just the first time.
Mehmet Oz defeated David McCormick by 951 votes in the Republican Senate primary, roughly the same difference as after the first count.
In some counties, the numbers have fallen too slightly. But they have not changed in any significant way. The census did not magically reveal new voices, nor did it reveal major mistakes or any fraud.
Election officials and experts said the fact that the numbers have hardly changed – in constituencies large and small, democratic and republican – should build public confidence.
“The census tells us we need to have absolute faith and trust in our election,” said Lisa Deeley, head of the Democratic election in Philadelphia, the state’s largest and blueest county.
“At every election, I make sure that these numbers are correct. So the recount really won’t change anything, “said Florence Kellett, director of the Republican election for Wyoming County, a red county that is one of the smallest in Pennsylvania.
“People can be really confident that the results are results and they won’t change much,” said Tad Hall, a registered independent who runs elections in Mercer County, a middle Republican district.
Oz won one vote in Philly, none in Wyoming County and two in Mercer. McCormick lost two votes to Philly and saw that his numbers remained exactly the same in Wyoming and Mercer.
This was the second consecutive census in the entire state of Pennsylvania, but the two took place under very different circumstances. It was a Republican primary election, and the other was a general election between Democrats and Republicans. It was a high-ranking competition in the US Senate, and the other was a minor competition. Both censuses confirmed the initial results and emphasized the accuracy of the system.
Elections are too complex to be held perfectly – there are too many people, ballots, polling stations, constituencies and procedures to follow. Some mistake is inevitable.
For example, a voter may have filled the balloon to vote for one candidate, but after folding his ballot in the mail, the ink turned into another balloon. This happened in Center County in this election.
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This margin of error is usually so small that it is accepted – but when the race is so close, counting helps to capture such cases. Pennsylvania law automatically triggers a recount when the victory margin is within 0.5%.
The Center County ballot, which was originally read as a super-vote, was instead reviewed at the recount, and election officials acknowledged that it was a clear vote for Carla Sands.
While the vast majority of votes come perfectly clean and ready to be counted, there are always some with whom election officials need to figure out what to do. This is part of the reason it takes time to count the votes – employees have to decide if defective ballots are so defective that they should be discarded. There are also ballots that they need to recreate in order to be counted, for example if the ballot is dirty or wrinkled.
But by the time the votes are counted, all these decisions have already been made. Every vote that can be counted has; the others were rejected.
This means that the recount is simply for counting each vote a second time – without adding new votes.
Election officials have repeatedly made sure that all numbers are arranged throughout the process.
“If I send 500 ballots to one section and they have 450 people, I’d better get 50 unvoted ballots back from them. So we’re checking this out, “said Kelet of Wyoming County. “Then it is better to have 450 people to vote in the poll book. It is better to have 450 people on the numbered voter list. And it is better to have 450 ballots released. Every election director does that. “
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Similarly, counties make sure that the number of ballots in the mail matches the number of envelopes, which should correspond to the number of voters marked as having returned their ballots.
Once the votes are counted, state law requires counties to audit 2% of the votes to make sure they are counted accurately, and in recent years the state has tested “risk-limiting audits,” the gold standard method.
While voters make all sorts of mistakes, the types that can be changed during the recount are few. In many counties, voting is by hand, with voters filling out a ballot and then scanning it. If the scanner identifies a problem – such as reading an “overvote” to select too many candidates – it will mark the ballot.
Only if the voter ignores this warning and still decides to re-vote will it pass, and if the re-vote turns out to be an error, it will be corrected at the recount. This is a very small number of votes, because voters usually do not decide to continue with the ballot, which they are told is wrong.
Other counties, including Philly, use machines that directly mark the ballot after voters make their choice. These machines will not even allow the voter to choose too many candidates.
Because newsletters are mailed without personal scans and warnings, there is a slightly higher chance that something will go wrong with them.
Even then, the numbers are low, district election officials said, perhaps because voters spend more time with those votes. Instead, the types of mistakes made in postal ballots are of the type in which the ballot is rejected in the first place – things like not signing.
The equipment used to count all ballots – including polling station or high-speed scanners used in county offices – is designed to count votes very accurately and precisely.
The “logic and accuracy” test before each election involves passing ballots through the machines to check that they are counting the votes correctly. The counties did this test again for the recount.
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The machines have improved a lot over the years, experts said – and all Pennsylvania machines are new. Gov. Tom Wolfe has ordered a change in voting systems before the 2020 election.
“The machines need to be certified, so it’s not like a random county can buy something out of the trunk of someone’s car and start counting ballots with it,” said Michael Morley, a professor of suffrage at Florida State University.
The recount to change the result of the election is not just about the number of votes added or removed from the total – the important thing is how these changes affect individual candidates.
Allegheny County, for example, was one of the few counties to see double-digit changes in the number of votes cast. But by adding 19 votes for Oz and 26 for McCormick, the change was just a grid of seven in favor of McCormick.
In general, there is no reason to expect a recount in favor of one particular candidate – there is no reason for one candidate’s voters to cast ballots with possible errors.
However, the strong guerrilla divide in voting methods from 2020 increases the low probability of a recount during a general election, which could be particularly beneficial for Democrats. Because Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, and ballots by mail are more likely to make mistakes than personal votes, Democrats can benefit a little more from the general election count.
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