The Indiana County Board of Commissioners, acting as the county’s election board, dealt with 449 provisional ballots during a meeting Friday afternoon. Most received thumbs up (143) or thumbs down (268) without issue, but four of the categories presented Friday were not clear-cut, leaving 38 ballots in limbo: Twenty-five ballots from voters who went to the wrong precinct received partial approval for races that were common to both the precinct where the vote was cast and the precinct where the vote should have been cast. In Indiana County, the contests for President, U.
S. Senate, state row offices and state Senate were countywide in scope. However, if the wrong precinct turned out to be in the wrong congressional district (14 or 15), and/or the wrong state legislative district (62 or 66), the vote would not count toward those offices.
One voter did not show identification when casting a provisional ballot. The three board members all rejected it, unless the issue can be cleared up by the voter by Tuesday at 4 p.m.
, when the election board will meet one final time, in this case also for consideration of ballots mailed in by members of the U.S. military.
“There are two dozen outstanding military ballots,” said Wilson Ragen, who is serving with Melissa Miller, Debra Streams and Robin Maryai as the county’s official return board. One voter did not complete a ballot envelope properly and it went to the wrong precinct. The three commissioners accepted that ballot but Indian.
