Centre County’s unofficial election results updated after delay due to software issue
Centre County’s unofficial election results became clearer Wednesday afternoon after an issue with the county’s election software led to a delay in vote totals.
County election officials had to rescan 13,401 mail-in ballots Wednesday, a release from the county states, after the county made “several attempts” Tuesday night and into early Wednesday to transfer the scanned mail-in ballot data into the county’s election software, but it didn’t work.
The process to rescan the ballots began Wednesday morning and about 8,200 rescanned mail-in ballots had been reported by the county around 2:30 p.m. Shortly after 5 p.m., the county posted about 5,000 additional rescanned main-in ballots.
All unofficial mail-in results have been added to the unofficial Election Day results, the release states, but the numbers will continue to change in the coming days because it does not include mail-in ballots with deficiencies, military ballots, overseas ballots or provisional ballots.
The county’s board of elections will meet at noon Thursday and 10 a.m. Friday to canvass the mail-in ballots that were segregated and review any deficiencies. They’ll also canvass military/overseas ballots, and provisional ballots. The meetings will be livestreamed on CNET.
It wasn’t until 12:30 a.m. Wednesday that the county issued a release stating that although all ballots (including mail-in ballots) had been scanned, it was having issues with mail-in ballot data. The county said it was working with the ballot scanner vendor to export the election results.
“Centre County’s Election team and IT team have identified that the data are successfully being exported from the mail-in ballot scanners, but that the data is not being recognized when uploaded to the elections software,” the previous release stated.
Around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, the county said tabulation of mail-in ballots was complete but the results couldn’t be placed into a report form.
Just after 3 p.m. Wednesday, after the first batch of rescanned mail-in ballots was reported, the AP called the last remaining Centre County race, House District 82. With the new ballots recorded, the AP called the race with incumbent Democrat Paul Takac leading Republican Therese Hollen, with 99% of the ballots counted.
The AP called the race for House District 77 around 9:45 a.m. Wednesday with Democrat Rep. Scott Conklin leading Republican challenger Marie Librizzi with 76% of votes counted.
Other races in Pennsylvania, including the key Senate race between Sen. Bob Casey and Dave McCormick, are also not called as of Wednesday evening. Some races were called earlier on Election Night, however, including 15th Congressional District and Senate District 25.
This story was originally published November 6, 2024 at 9:38 AM.
