Okay, I'd like to call this meeting of the Allegheny County Board of Elections. Um Monday, June 9th, 2025 at 2PM to order. Uh roll call please. Present. Here. Here. Wonderful. Do we have any public comment today? Diet. Thank you, sir. You have 3 minutes. My name is David Bestor, judge of Election at Pittsburgh Ward seven, District 13. On Election Day,
we had a problem with the fact that our parking is normally reserved for voters in front of the poll was filled up with the Winchester Thurston Students parking there and the police did not want to do anything about it. Uh we do have on on One Street Or something. Uh it's something that this is one pole. Uh you have quite a few. Most of them probably have off-street parking
but that's not necessarily the case with the number that might come up with something similar to this. So, it's a suggestion that we make some improvements in the process. By having it followed through on. Okay? Thank you. Thank you. I was the one we would be able to call in the time on Election Day because they're just on our at school. Um we are aware of speaking of facilities folks that there are some situations in the city particular where we may
upon further review, look for some parking variants as you might see around downtown that we could get just for a couple of days just to accommodate that. So, Elections is aware and will be addressing. Thank you for that update. Um moving to the approval of the minutes. So, I have a motion to approve the minutes from May 8th, 2025 meeting. So, I have. Second, on paper. Alright. And now, we are going to certify the municipal primary election from May 20th twenty twenty-five. Thank you. Um Election morning was relatively
smooth. It did have a handful of places that open late. Either the board member showed up late or putting it in the building. Stuff like that with all of our polling places. I mean, we were able to handle all those situations internally. I'm just pretty unreadful today. The turnout was rather low. I predicted 30%. It was 25% overall. Um was thirty-four 79 Democrat and 19. 92 Republicans who take the average. Um we have 82, 000 people vote by mail. 67, 000 Democratic. 13, 000 votes are
returned Republican ballots. When it's all said and done, this number will continue to grow. There's 862 ballots that we're unable to count, unable to count. Whether they were returned without the secrecy envoy, not signed by the voter, or received after the deadline. Um, I think the third day after the election that we received about 500 of those in the mail alone. So that's, that was no something. And that's, that's unfortunate. I mean, we want to count on your ballot that's cast. So, all of our writings are done, notification was mailed to all the
municipal branches. There's 262 winners. I don't know if you're aware that we had four candidates for court of common police that received over 6000 votes. Now, as part of each. So, it's part of what you I'm asking you to sign today to certify those numbers to the state and the state will notify the the judicial candidates that there are a couple county council Republican right-in winners and the rest of our municipal all their mailings are not last Thursday. We gave them until June 23rd to to file and claim the office. Um there's a approximately that
number again 300, 350. These are judges and inspectors of elections. All their vote totals are tallied and you know, made into the spreadsheet. They're going to start getting out of the mail today. Um provisional ballots, we had 1708 casts. 840 were counted or counted completely. Um 3 and 95 were partially counted and four hundred and seventy3 were not counted. Mostly those who were not counted were people in the suburbs registered nonpartisan and wanted
to register one to vote Democrat or Republican in the primary. Or not registered at all. And now we we end up pretty good with poll workers. We we paid 6200 poll workers. This check went out the week after. That's what I'll have. I'm I'm ready for any questions you may have for us. Sorry. For the ones that had running partially counted, what what kind of instances occurred there? With the provisionals. For example, if somebody is registered and I'm
going to make this up in the city of Pittsburgh and they work in Baldwin and went into a polling place in Baldwin, they're registered to vote. They're registered that party. We can count the offices that they were, that they voted on that ballot. It would mostly be the county wide offices. You know, we we would vote to like offices that they could vote for. So, so if someone did that, you would look up their address and you do all that, okay? Yes, we looked up where they're registered, where they voted. We also make sure that they didn't vote in their own precinct before we decided if if this
just of what anybody trying to vote twice. Oh, that's great. Thanks. The growl? Um I just have a question about when there are especially when the referendum questions on the back. If we have the neutral as a county over printing an extra message on the bottom of the ballot to like really get people's attention to flip on the back. I know I've heard a lot of people talking about you know messaging to use around it but I do think an actual statement on the ballot. Flip it over. There are more things to vote for on the back. It
would be really helpful. Um have you we are we able to do that if we were as a board at a later date to decide to do that. And there is some garbage. If you know it's all about to always three columns. The third column at the bottom, it'll say, you know, additional offices on reverse side. Right. Please check the backside but we we could Like in the instructions are just something that catches a lot of people's attention because I know when I went went to vote myself that that was something that the poll worker said to me is that they noticed they were getting a lot of ballots that were blank on the back and just
wondering what we can do to kind of fix that. So, I think all the city of Pittsburgh had any questions on the fact because it is possible to have vertebrates. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I don't have any questions. I just want to thank you again for administering another successful and smooth election. Thank you. Um is there any new business? Or do we have to do a boat? Okay. Um so do I have a motion to move to certify the May 20th twenty 2-five Municipal Primary Election? So, it moves. Second. Second. I have a first
and second. All in favor. I. Moving on to new business. I have no new business. Thank you. Um just a couple things people have notified me about. Um at the South Park Satellite Center, handicap parking again. So, the handicap parking is very nice but they said what was happening is there was no sign saying it existed. So, people are parking right here then hobbling over and then seeing the handicap parking. So, if we could just get a signage, they're saying
handicap ahead to the left or whatever. Um that would be helpful. Um the other thing I I was just had a curiosity about. So, I've been following the results the boning results from the Pittsburgh Public School Board on the news. Made the news like three different lights that I happen to catch it and let me preface. I have no connection to any candidate, nothing with the school board. I'm just interested in the process, how it goes. So, if I had it right, so on district nine, election
night twentieth ended with the district nine candidate ahead by one vote. With one precinct not reported. Then, it came out on Friday, three days later, that it was reported that day, three days later, and mile walkers, they had 15 votes and then, fast forward to Wednesday, provisionals were counted, and then Walker ends up five ahead, Batonic conceded, and we're done. What happen that that precinct wasn't
reported. So, we had four machines or four precincts that we weren't able to report election night. Um inside each precinct voting machine, DS 200 are 2 memory sticks. Um one is ready in election night over the internet and that is our unofficial stick. We cannot use that stick again to read into our database because it came in contact with the internet. The day after the election, we read the officials they came. So, we we we accumulate all those results but we didn't update our website until Friday at 9 AM until the swearing in
that tunnel. That's when we can start making adjustments to our official database. Ironically, I spoke to both candidates in that race and the precinct that was missing is in the 27th ward, I believe. Um the judges in of election inspectors did their job correctly and they posted a copy of the tape on the wall. Both candidates were able to go to the polling place the next day and see that tape and get the results. So, they both knew the outcome before it was put online. Then you are correct. Um Miss Botanic came in and observed the return board. Um she observed this open
account to provisionals and she did pick up some votes. But that that's chronologically how that happened. Like why would every other precinct that I could see was counted wide? Why didn't that one get counted? So it didn't like they did not deliver the results at night or? So they would have delivered one stick and not the other. And like I said we don't want electromagnetic sticks into the different databases. We don't want to contaminate. But we had the the signed tapes from the polling location. 2 sticks. Yeah.
Why didn't they bring two? They're in different locations than the machine. You have thought about two different doors to get them and it's not always the same precincts but there's always a few that forget one of them. Couple. Post it on the machine. Don't forget me. Don't eat. There are no toilet machines and it's actually out of our two fifty, you know, polling place coordinators that go around the polling places on election day. That's one of the things that they stress and tell the judges and the board members. Please remember, return those things but I
think one of the precincts was Ross and when they started to shut down the machine before it had written the results to the sticks, they hit the off button. So, you weren't getting any results from that machine that night no matter what you did. We had to rescan those ballots. So, that is a very unusual happen but. Like I said, there's always a couple weeds a lot in there. But to try and forget them all, the thought doesn't always work. Yeah. Then another comment someone had taught me about it. So, in county council, district 13, I guess the
member resigned, new member was appointed, and he'll be running in November. So, the Allegheny County Republican Party contacted me and said they haven't been able to get any information on the process, how they would get a Republican candidate on the ballot. And if we could just let them know, they said they've called a couple times and they're not getting information. They're concerned. They're going to miss a deadline and lose an opportunity. No. I I did speak to representatives both party headquarters. Um that. I mean both
both the two people from headquarters told me this weekend neither one had a clue what to do. So mister Richie emailed me and mister emailed me and gave like can we wait until we certify this election? That office will placed on a November ballot. Um each party will have the opportunity to nominate one candidate for placement on the ballot. And anybody wishing to run as an independent can do so. Um I saw you stated that nice and clear. I don't have it the exact date off top of my head but the deadline for filing is
around September 18th. So we we have plenty of time. There's no rush. So I got one to wait till we certify before I jumped into that. That makes sense. And then I just have one last thing sort of something it's important to me that attention to detail I think is critical especially for the election department or probably any other department act that's critical maybe budget and if you can remember a couple less in the April meeting I I saw several inaccuracies on the minutes like the wrong
election day so it's still listed from twenty-four and there are couple things like that okay it happens but then right before the primary had a couple election judge of elections contact me and say hey did you know we got a letter in the mail an information sheet what to do and then the very next day, we got an Email to ignore that. Here's a correction. They said the dates were wrong again and that I don't know. I didn't see anything but two people had dementia to me and I just think that's very
unacceptable because you lose credibility when you have one inaccuracy. It looks like someone's cut and pasting and not. Or just using old form. I don't know. But I I agree with you. But can you send me that documentation? Um I I don't have documentation but I will ask for it. Thank you. I will ask for it. Thank you. I'm all resolved now. But I'll I'll get that to you. I'll I'll call those people and ask them to send me the email. Okay? Um I'm also say I got a lot of positive
feedback about the new sticker. So, we're very excited about it. Um so, I think it really embodies it never really the patriotic act of voting but you survived it which is which is really lovely. Um okay. Yeah. They get it. If you'll vote in the general, they'll get it again. Thank you. So, thank you Elections. Just come back. Maybe we'll get it off past 30%. Uh Um yeah. With that. Do I have a motion to
adjourn? I have to documentation. Oh, brilliant. Okay. Then I won't know how to turn or will I adjourn first and then we'll sign. Okay, I'm adjourning and then we will sign in.