Missing thumb drive forces recount
21,000 in-person absentee ballots must be rescanned to ensure accuracy
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A missing thumb drive for a ballot scanner forced the Lancaster County elections office to recount more than 21,000 in-person absentee ballots late Tuesday night, leaving the results of local races in question at presstime.
The recounted ballots represent 42% of the county’s vote total in the election, so they could affect the results of almost every race.
Rick Crimminger, chairman of the Lancaster County Election Commission, said no one is sure what happened to the thumb drive.
“Thankfully, we have paper ballots as a back-up,” Crimminger said.
“The best thing we can do to make it right is to rescan all the paper ballots, so that is what we are doing. We could be here for a couple of more hours,” Crimminger said just before 10:30 p.m.
County voters have been flooding into the county administration building for the last month after state lawmakers approved a plan to allow in-person no-excuse absentee voting in the general election due to COVID-19.
To expedite that process, electronic voting machines were set up on the lower level, lobby and upper floor of the building. A total of 21,053 in-person absentee ballots were cast between Oct. 5 and 5 p.m. Monday.
Part of the system included a scanner on each floor that voters slid their ballots into to complete the process. Each scanner has a thumb drive that stores the information. And one of the thumb drives was missing Tuesday night.
“We knew something was up when it only showed 17 recorded ballots,” Crimminger said. “We can’t really tell if the one that’s missing is the one from the basement, the lobby or the second floor. All we know is that it’s missing.”
The Lancaster News will post the total results online at www.thelancasternews.com soon after they are available and in the weekend print edition of The Lancaster News.
Follow reporter Greg Summers on Twitter @GregSummersTLN or contact him at (803) 283-1156.
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