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Republican Rick Saccone, left, and Democrat Conor Lamb.
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GOP challenges Lamb, who won vote count in District 18

Rebecca Droke (Rick Saccone), Stephanie Strasburg (Conor Lamb) / Post-Gazette photos

GOP challenges Lamb, who won vote count in District 18

Democrat Conor Lamb has 627 more votes than Republican Rick Saccone, but GOP officials are alleging voting irregularities in the District 18 special election and have asked election officials in all four of the district’s counties to impound their voting machines, pending a potential recount.

Mr. Lamb told supporters “We did it” early Wednesday morning, and several news outlets, including the New York Times, have declared him the winner of the contest, which attracted national attention as an indication of the electorate’s mood as midterm elections approach.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the National Republican Congressional Committee said election officials had agreed to impound the machines and ballots from the March 13 contest, whose outcome bolstered Democrats and raised anxieties within the GOP.

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Mr. Lamb of Mt. Lebanon bested Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone of Elizabeth Township in an extremely tight contest. With a few hundred overseas and provisional ballots still out, his lead Wednesday night was 627 votes out of more than 200,000 cast in the congressional district formerly held by Republican Tim Murphy. Mr. Murphy resigned after the Post-Gazette reported that he asked a woman with whom he was having an affair to get an abortion, despite his public stance as a pro-life Republican.

Director of Elections in Washington County, Larry Spahr, recounts a group of absentee ballots as they are entered into a computer before being run through the TSX voting machine at the Washington County Elections Office early Wednesday morning at the Elections Office of Washington County in Washington. The Washington County absentee ballots were the last to be counted in the 18th Congressional District Special Election between candidates Conor Lamb and Rick Saccone.
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The seat had been safely Republican for more than a decade and national Republican organization spent millions supporting Mr. Saccone. But Mr. Lamb mounted a strong challenge and was apparently aided by a roughly 45 percent voter turnout across the four counties in the district.

Republicans are investigating a number of purported Election Day irregularities including problems with the machines, voters being told to go to the wrong polling places, and Republican attorneys being barred from overseeing the counting of absentee ballots in Allegheny County.

In a letter to Allan Opsitnick, the solicitor for the county’s election division, attorney Kathleen Gallagher wrote that the county had violated the state Election code by preventing attorney Russell Giancola to monitor the vote computation. Mr. Giancola was eventually allowed to oversee the process, the letter said, but “the delay deprived the [Saccone] campaign of the right to have counsel present during the computation reporting process.”

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The letter also argues that a state Supreme Court effort to redraw Congressional district lines shortly before the May primary had added to voter confusion. Given that, Ms. Gallagher asserts, “transparency is critical to the establishment and maintenance of a proper election process and voter confidence in [it].”

County spokeswoman Amie Downs said that on Election Day there had been discussions with Republican attorneys about their ability to oversee the vote-counting process. Under the state Election Code, she said, such observers must have a signed authorization from the chair of the county committee. "They didn't produce that until the very end of the evening, when the ballots had already been scanned," she said.

Mark Wolosik, who directs the county's elections office, said that late Tuesday morning, “a call came in asking about people being able to observe the [counting] process on Election Night."

Usually, he said, "people ask ahead of time" rather than on Election Day itself.

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Phone messages were exchanged over the following hours, and eventually two Republican attorneys arrived at the central tabulation center, located in Pittsburgh. Mr. Wolosik said that an attorney identified himself as being "from the Saccone campaign," but the Election Code only allows political parties, not candidates, to deputize observers. A lawyer later produced an email purporting to show such authorization, but Mr. Wolosik said he couldn't accept that because "there was no signature." He swore in the observer after receiving a signed authorization.

The absentee ballots themselves are run through an optical scanner that records the vote, and the ballots are preserved afterward, meaning a recount is possible should one be ordered. Ordinarily, for both absentee and in-person voters, election workers compare the number of votes cast to the number of voters logged in by poll workers on Election Day, to make sure the numbers correspond. Court challenges could of course complicate that process, but otherwise, “if there's no discrepancy on the face, then we accept the count as accurate," Mr. Wolosik said

Ultimately, the count is certified by the Board of Elections, which consists of Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and the two at-large members of Allegheny County Council: Democrat John DeFazio and Republican Sam DeMarco. The board is slated to meet on April 2.

D. Raja, the chair of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County, did not return a call for comment Wednesday.

Ms. Downs added that prior to providing the authorization, the Republican observer was allowed to watch from the doorway, and that the Democrats had no observers on hand for the ballot counting in Washington County.

There were numerous reports Tuesday of voters being confused about whether they lived within the 18th Congressional District, whether as a result of a saturation-bombing TV campaign or of confusion stemming from a court battle over whether district lines should be redrawn later this year. But the county reported only a couple isolated problems with voting machines, including low battery power and a blank screen on one machine. There were no reports of "calibration errors," Ms. Downs said, in which touching the screen in one place results in a box elsewhere being checked.

Elsewhere in the district, the number of problems was relatively small, according to elections officials.

Greene County officials sent technicians to two polling places to address calibration problems, where the machines were attempting to mark a different candidate than the one the voter selected. The problem was resolved quickly and the correct votes were logged, according to elections officials.

"They were taken care of immediately, and there was only a few of those, and that's basically normal," said Tina Kiger, the director of elections and voter registration for Greene County.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, officials received about 20 calls from Greene and Westmoreland county residents who were confused by the option to vote "straight party" or by selecting an individual candidate. If both options are selected, the machines defer to the selection for the individual candidate.

In Westmoreland County, one voting machine "crashed" and elections officials couldn't receive a count for five votes, according to state officials. County officials there consulted with their solicitor, state officials and the manufacturer, then "extracted the case vote records while preserving the integrity of the original vote-casting media," according to Wanda Murren, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State.

The state had not received any official complaints about voting problems as of about 4 p.m. Wednesday, Ms. Murren said.

To request a recount, voters must petition their county board of elections or a Common Pleas Court.

The state election code requires officials to keep voting terminals sealed or locked for at least 20 days or longer, unless a court order overrides that.

In the event of a recount, the county board of election must examine the vote totals produced by each voting machine.

Votes cast by paper must be tallied again by hand or by a different type of electronic machine than the one used in the first counting.

Chris Potter: cpotter@post-gazette.com; Liz Navratil: lnavratil@post-gazette.com

First Published: March 14, 2018, 2:42 p.m.
Updated: March 14, 2018, 3:25 p.m.

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