http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/election/s_630775.html
An election redo in one ward in Allegheny County because less than half a dozen voters were somehow enabled to vote in the Primary - it's alleged - in another political party from which they are registered.
And the new ballots will be mailed to the selected few who are registered as the "harmed" party but whose votes were wronged due to the debacle.
What will be of interest - how many of the 171 Democrat registrants who voted in the Primary at the local Ward will bother to fill out a new ballot and how many will leave the race/s undervoted?
How many will write in names of somebody else? Wonder whether that would be legal? Haha. Wouldn't it be something if voters changed their minds after all that had happened and enmasse wrote in someone's name who didn't participate in the Democrat ticket/primary process?
Just wondering...
Net the Truth Online
Voting redo ordered in Monroeville's Ward 5
By Brian Bowling
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The May primary still isn't over for 171 Democrats in the first district of Monroeville's fifth ward.
Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Joseph James ruled Tuesday that those people will get the chance to vote again in the Ward 5 council race because five Republicans and one independent illegally voted in the Democratic primary.
"Let's see if we can get it done right this time," James said at the end of a cordial hearing in which attorney Robert Wratcher, representing incumbent Marshall Boone, 68, and attorney Karen Balaban, representing challenger Diane Allison, 42, agreed that a special election by mail is the way to correct the problem.
County elections manager Mark Wolosik said his office will mail paper ballots with the two candidates' names to the 171 Democrats who legitimately voted in District 1, Ward 5. Democrats who didn't vote on May 19 aren't eligible to vote in the special election.
The county hopes to send the ballots out Monday, but it may take an extra day or so to get them ready. The ballots will have to be returned within 15 days.
The last special election by mail in the county was held in 1999 when a lever voting machine malfunctioned in Plum and added 100 votes to a council primary race, Wolosik said. Eighty-four percent -- or 137 of the 164 eligible voters -- recast their ballots then.
Allegheny County's electronic voting system doesn't leave a paper trail that would allow officials to determine for which candidate the six party crashers voted, Wolosik said.
Preliminary results had Boone leading Allison by a 198-196 count. James said he couldn't allow the six miscast votes to stand because they could reverse Boone's two-vote lead.
Allison filed a petition to challenge the results, which led the Allegheny County Board of Elections to refuse to certify the District 1 results for the Ward 5 race.
Wolosik said the five Republicans apparently were able to vote as Democrats because poll workers failed to set the machine for the Republican ballot. He told the judge the old lever voting machines had the same problem.
The one independent apparently claimed to be a Democrat on Election Day and was allowed to vote on the Democratic ballot, he said.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/election/s_630775.html
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