With only four races on the ballot — and the outcome of those races not in doubt — adjudicating the 2022 General Election was less complex than it otherwise could have been.

The Warren County Board of Elections met Monday to adjudicate a series of ballots as part of finalizing the count of last Tuesday’s results. As of Monday morning, John Fetterman’s lead for a U.S. Senate seat has expanded to more than 200,000 votes over Mehmet Oz while Josh Shapiro’s margin over Doug Mastriano in the race for governor is more than 750,000 votes.

The Associated Press called both races early Wednesday morning. With the outcome not in doubt, adjudication on Monday was more of a formality. It included reviewing “ambiguous marks” on ballots as well as reviewing several specific mail in ballots and a slate of provisionals.

The Board of Elections decided to count four ballots where the secrecy envelope was a regular white – sealed – envelope. Elections Director Krystle Ransom said she directed one voter to send their ballot in a regular envelope rather than the one that came with the ballot because there was not sufficient time to mail another official secrecy envelope and the individuals couldn’t make it to the courthouse.

Solicitor Nathaniel Schmidt said there is no case law that requires the official envelope.

“The board here is sort of on their own” regarding whether to count the ballots, he said. Several mail in ballots were not counted because they did not arrive at the courthouse by the 8 p.m. election night deadline.

The board then adjudicated 57 provisional ballots. A total of 12 were cast by people not registered to vote and those were not counted. Two were rejected because the form on the ballot was not filled out completely. The rest, Ransom said, were people who were issued a mail in or absentee ballot, did not return it and showed up to the polls to vote.

“That’s the proper function of a provisional ballot,” Schmidt said.

The board discussed the possibility of holding some kind of event to encourage people to check their status.

“It’s amazing to me the number of people who don’t know their own registration status,” Jeff Eggleston said.

He thanked county elections staff for their work in executing this election.

“This is probably the smoothest election I’ve ever been involved in,” he said. “There’s elevated turnout (and) no major issues at the polls that I could see.. And very limited complaints about any kind of situation.”

Schmidt noted that the county is still party to two federal election-related lawsuits. One, he said, was brought by the Fetterman campaign and activists groups and seeks to challenge a state Supreme Court decision regarding the lack of dates on mail in ballots. The second, he said, is similar and was brought by the NAACP and other organizations. Ransom noted that turnout for the 2020 presidential election was 66 percent.

With 61 percent turnout last week, Ransom summarized turnout levels succinctly — “That’s insane.”