Westmoreland County election officials said Monday that 375 mail-in ballots delivered to the courthouse nine minutes late on Election Day will not initially be added to the vote totals.
County commissioners, acting as the elections board, approved the start of the process to review and count all 816 ballots that were delivered to the courthouse after polls closed last Tuesday, which the state Supreme Court ruled last month were eligible and legally submitted if postmarked by Nov. 3 and received at county election offices by 5 p.m. Nov. 6.
Hundreds of ballots, however, were just minutes away from arriving on time to be included with the initial count — a situation that had county officials wondering why they were delivered late on Election Day.
Elections Bureau Director JoAnn Sebastiani said the U.S. Postal Service refused to allow county workers to retrieve ballots from the Greensburg Post Office before polls closed. Postal officials explained the ballots arrived late because of a logistical issue and claimed they could not park near the courthouse or find a way into the building, Sebastiani said.
