Author: Jennifer Learn-Andes jandes@timesleader.com

Officials said on Friday that the two flash drives containing the results of the November 2 election were still in the courier bag of the election judges and were never added to the ballots on election night.

Dennis Williams, the chairman of the County Election Commission, announced the discovery in Friday's procedure, which required the breaking of a tie in numerous games.

The flash drive contains a total of 255 votes from scanners/tabulators in the 3rd district of Kingston and Dorrance.

Kingston Township District 3 Drive has 162 votes, while Dorrance Township has 93 votes in total.

The results of these votes were incorporated into the updated unofficial statistics published on luzernecounty.org on Friday night.

Williams said that in the post-election settlement, the Election Bureau realized that "the numbers are not proportional" in the two cities, and recorded the number of voters signed on the electronic voting book and the scanner used at the polling station on the tabulation tape. Compare the number of votes on. .

Williams said that the Volunteer Citizens Election Committee, which must prove the results of the election, was informed of the settlement issue on Thursday.

Under the current system, voters must make a selection on the electronic ballot marking device at the polling station, and then print out the ballot. After reviewing the printout and confirming that all options are their chosen options, voters must enter them into the scanner/tabulator to vote.

The scanned paper ballots will be placed in a safe trash can for future audits or recounts.

The ballot results of each scanner/tabulator are stored in flash drives called "cards", which are shipped to Wilkes-Barre city center with other polling station materials at 8 pm County Pennsylvania Plaza

The county staff then loaded the data from the flash drive into the county's central voting system.

She said that when settlement issues arose, the county realized that the two flash drives had never been entered into the results.

Williams said she asked if anyone had checked the election night courier bag at Penn Place, and both flash drives were still in the bag.

Williams said that board members quickly reviewed the results of the flash drive and determined that they changed the number of votes, but did not change the winners of the municipal competitions in the two cities.

Nevertheless, she emphasized that the board of directors is taking the matter seriously and will require an agreement to be made so as not to happen again.

Although two people must be involved in the removal of the contents of each delivery bag on election night, she said that both the content removal station and the central vote-counting area of ​​the election bureau need a master list to record the receipt of each flash drive. Detect any unreceived content.

She said the board members will also review the types of delivery bags used to ensure flash drives are clearly visible when the contents are deleted.

Acting County Mayor Romilda Crocamo (Romilda Crocamo) said that the county has been recommended to settle as soon as possible, which will be a change in the new agreement that the government will propose for future elections.

In addition, although a flash drive tracking list was added for the November 2 election, it will be expanded to require more details in future elections, she said.

Crocamo emphasized that the problem was discovered before the results were certified.

"This is the purpose of the settlement. This is why these are still unofficial results," Crocamo said.

The county information technology director Mauro DiMauro also pointed out that if the flash drive is lost or not provided by the election judge, there are two other options. Each scanner/tabulator has a second flash drive, which is kept in the machine as a backup. He said that if the two flash drives disappeared somehow, the paper ballot could be retrieved from the secure storage.

He said that more than 200 scanners/tabulators were allocated to polling stations because some of the 186 constituencies had more than one. However, sometimes the second flash drive will not be returned because the district does not have to activate it based on turnout, he said.

When Williams announced the news, county councillor Walter Griffith, who he was observing at Penn Plaza, said that he would advocate procedures to ensure that flash drives were not missed early in the statistics.