Allegheny County will not count any more ballots until tomorrow because of a court order over some 29,000 disputed ballots, according to county officials.
But the county will still be preparing for a resumption tomorrow of the counting.
“They’re processing them. No one has the day off. They’re working,” Fitzgerald told CNN.
There are approximately 36,000 ballots left to count, according to Allegheny Executive Rich Fitzgerald. Beyond the court ordered pile, the county has some 2,800 that were partially damaged and another 4,000 that need to be evaluated because of issues like missing dates or signature problems.
In addition, 500 ballots arrived yesterday that were mailed before the election.
Fitzgerald said the county was told by the governor’s office that statewide there are probably 10,000 ballots that were received on Wednesday after the election.
The order stems from a legal challenge over misprinted ballots that had to be reissued to some voters. The county agreed not to count the potential pool of reprinted ballots until Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. local time, the deadline for receiving mail-in that were sent by election day.
Allegheny County poll workers will not be counting today because the bulk of the remaining pool of ballots in the county are the disputed pile. Allegheny Executive Rich Fitzgerald said they would be continuing to process ballots on Thursday but they might not be scanning them.
County Council member Bethay Hallam said that the county should put more information out about what is going on.
Hallam added that “there is nothing malicious going on here.” “It is frustrating that there isn’t more information of what they are actually doing today.”
“The Elections Division staff will be using the day to do administrative work,” according to an internal county communication obtained by CNN. They will resume counting on Friday.
UPDATE: This post has been updated with additional details from county officials.
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