York County to begin recount of contested ballots

(Harrisburg) — York County is slated to begin a manual recount today of ballots cast in eight contested races.

Candidates running for positions on several borough councils and the York County Court of Common Pleas were cross-filed, meaning their names showed up under the Republican and Democratic categories.

Normally, a voting machine will prevent a person from voting for the same person twice, but that wasn’t the case last Tuesday.

The county election’s office said a programming mistake was discovered last Monday, which was too late to pull the voting machines from polling places.

Signs on the machines reminded voters to only vote for a candidate once, but the only way to make sure that happened is to manually recount the vote. 

York County spokesman Mark Walters said county employees will have to review grids of voting data from the machines to determine if some did cast two ballots.

“We’re going to look at each grid and–knowing what numbers to look for based on what candidates are in these impacted races–how many of them appear twice,” he said. 

Walters expects the recount to take at least a few days, if not the better part of the week.

“Eleven sheets of paper worth of grids is one voting machine in Crossroads Borough,” he said. “If that’s not the smallest municipality in York County it’s the second- or third-smallest.”

The recount starts at 9 a.m. at the York County Administrative Center and is open to the public.