Election Officials Blame Worker Mistake On Nine Tossed Military Mail-In Ballots
Pennsylvania’s top elections officials said the decision of an election worker to toss out nine military ballots was nothing more than just a mistake and not blatant fraud.
Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said the Luzerne County election office workers would be getting trained on how to handle the mail-in military and overseas ballots. She said the investigation is still going on, but from the first reports, it was nothing more than a terrible decision on a worker’s part.
She said this wasn’t intentional and it wasn’t fraud. Boockvar said the workers would receive a lot of training to keep the incident from happening again.
U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly mentions the nine ballots as proof of election fraud with mentions of it during the presidential debate with Democratic contender Joe Biden. He first mentioned the ballots during a radio show appearance, hours before his nominated U.S. attorney made an announcement of it.
Pennsylvania deputy secretary for elections Jonathan Marks said the overseas and military ballots of Luzerne County arrived in envelopes that didn’t clearly identify them as ballots. Typically, these ballots come back and are immediately resealed and stored with other absentee or mail-in ballots to wait for counting.
Marks said it boils down to confusion.
The Department of State will work with Luzerne County elections workers on what should be done when ballot material is found inside unmarked enveloped.
Marks said this is what needs to be addressed. He said the worker at the heart of the matter, who was not identified, was fired for the mistake. Marks said the worker failed to reach out to other workers in the office.
Investigators have not said who recovered the ballots or the process of how two were resealed. Seven of the nine ballots were cast for Trump.
The FBI has not said if criminal charges would happen or if the nine votes would be added to the count.
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