Westmoreland primary voter turnout tops 31%
May 28—More than 76,000 ballots were cast in Westmoreland County during this month's primary as voter turnout topped more than 31%, a figure substantially surpassing totals from four years ago.
According to figures released Friday by the county election bureau, 35% of registered Republicans and 31% of Democrats cast ballots earlier this month. Another 11% of voters registered as independents or members of other political parties also cast ballots on four referendums.
Officials anticipated turnout of 25% based on estimates of past municipal primaries, which traditionally see fewer voters participate. During the 2017 municipal primary, turnout was just 19%, when just 46,000 voters cast ballots.
No excuse mail-in balloting contributed to the increase, according to Election Bureau Director JoAnn Sebastiani. More than 13,000 mail-in ballots were cast by county voters this spring.
Sebastiani said turnout figures do not include the more than 850 mail-in ballots that arrived at the courthouse in the days after the May 18 primary. Most of those ballots, 821, arrived by mail a day late, on May 19.
No ballots were delivered by the Post Office after the polls closed on primary day.
"We went down to the post office three times on Election Day," Sebastiani said, noting that some ballots postmarked after May 18 are still arriving.
The county received three ballots in the mail on Thursday and another four arrived Friday.
None of the late ballots were counted this spring after the state Legislature amended voting laws to prohibit counting of late mail-in ballots. Last fall, the state Supreme Court ruled ballots postmarked by Election Day but arriving at the courthouse in the following three days were properly cast and were added to the vote totals.
County officials said 816 ballots arrived during that three-day period last fall, including 375 that were delivered by the post office nine minutes after the polls closed on Election Day.
Meanwhile, in another change from the fall, there were just 183 provisional ballots cast at the polls during the primary.
Last fall, when voter turnout topped 81% for the presidential election, there were more than 3,800 provisional ballots cast, with about a third of those disqualified for various reasons, including errors by made by poll workers and voters.
Sebastiani said just 38 provisional ballots were disqualified this spring.
"The judges of elections did a really good job processing the provisional ballots," Sebastiani said.
Final counting of more than 35,000 write-in votes was expected to be completed Friday with those results posted to the county's website sometime over the next several days. The county's election board on June 2 is slated to give pre-approval to those write-in votes as well as all tallies from the primary, in which about 1,000 candidates sought more than 2,000 offices.
A final certification vote is scheduled for June 7.
Rich Cholodofsky is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Rich at 724-830-6293, rcholodofsky@triblive.com or via Twitter .
