Persistent questions from voters and a petition with 5,000 signatures have convinced the Lycoming County Commissioners in Pennsylvania to recount its 2020 election results.
Around the state, loosely organized groups of voters have been asking various counties for recounts from 2020.
“In our county, they approached our commissioners and leveled allegations that there were thousands of uncounted votes in our county based on what I believe are nonsense statistics,” Lycoming County Director of Elections Forrest Lehman told The Epoch Times.
Groups of 20-80 people started attending county meetings asking for the recount. The county showed various information to answer their questions, Lehman said, but voters still wanted a recount and gathered some 5,000 signatures to make that request.
“That’s when county commissioners decided, as the board of elections, that if there are 5,000 people who signed this petition and have this belief, then we need to hand count these ballots in order to restore public trust in the outcomes of our elections,” Lehman said.
The county has about 70,000 registered voters and a population of around 120,000, so to the commissioners, 5,000 is a lot of signatures, he said.
“This is not something we want to do after every election, but we need to do it once, at least, in order to prove once and for all that our voting system counts the votes accurately and that there were not thousands of uncounted votes that were hidden by an algorithm or some other nonsense like that,” Lehman said.
Hand Count
Lycoming County votes by machine. Voters fill in ovals on paper to indicate the candidate they want, then the paper is fed into a scanning machine where an image of the ballot is captured, and the vote is counted. The paper ballot is saved in a secure location. The scanned count is stored on a removable USB device on the scanning machine in each precinct, Lehman explained.
By Beth Brelje
