Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry The Warren County Board of Elections, represented by (from left) Pam Matve, Jeff Eggleston, and Ben Kafferlin, with Solicitor Nathaniel Schmidt, work through mail-in ballot irregularities during ballot adjudication Friday morning.

The Warren County Board of Elections adjudicated ballots on Friday.

Their tasks were to make decisions on mail-in ballots that had irregularities and to examine write-in votes.

“We’re going through the irregular ballots and seeing which will be counted,” Chairman Ben Kafferlin said. “Then, we are going through the write-ins that might actually result in a nomination.”

The board members were willing to be generous with voter intent when it came to the mail-ins, but were bound by state law to reject many of the 30 or so that were problematic.

Ballots that were not sealed in security envelopes had to be rejected.

Ballots without signatures and those without dates, or bearing invalid dates – not between when the ballots were sent out and Election Day – were not counted.

Most of the situations were clear.

When the board needed information about the state and federal legal situations regarding ballots, they referred to Solicitor Nathaniel Schmidt.

Only one of the first 10 ballots they checked was sent through to be counted.

WRITE-INS

It isn’t all Mickey Mouse (there were at least four of them) when it comes to the write-ins.

The write-ins of particular interest were on the Democratic side of races for commissioner, sheriff, and treasurer, as well as the announced write-in campaign for school board region I.

Without ballot candidates for the three row offices, if a candidate for county-wide office received more than 100 write-ins from Democrats, that person will appear on the ballot in November as the Democratic candidate.

There were 268 write-ins for commissioner on Democratic ballots, 560 for sheriff, and 328 for treasurer.

Kafferlin said there weren’t enough write-in votes cast for region I school board to make a difference in the outcome of the election, but the board put in the time to evaluate those votes as Bridget Schwab announced her write-in campaign in advance of the primary.

Among the less serious write-in votes were votes for Taylor Swift, Deputy Dog, Donald and Daisy Duck, and one for Dozer, who is reportedly a Labrador retriever who spends time at the Conewango 2 polling place. Also receiving a vote in the race for county commissioner was Aaahhh.

TURNOUT

The county-wide voter turnout for Tuesday’s Primary was 33 percent, according to Director of Elections Krystle Ransom.

The turnout in Sheffield and Youngsville – places where school board races were hottest – brought that average up.

In Sheffield Township, turnout was 42 percent. In Youngsville Borough, 40 percent of voters had their voices heard.