The Butler Country Courthouse is shown in this December 2017 file photo. Butler Eagle file photo

DAVE PRELOSKY

The Butler County Bureau of Elections staff began recounting ballots Wednesday in the too-close-to-call Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania between candidates Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.

The local election staff is expected to take two days to fully conduct its recount procedures.

The automatic recount was triggered statewide after Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon, and McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, saw a less than .5% difference in their total votes during the May 17 primary.

According to Wil White, county solicitor, recounts are not a normal occurrence, but this is the second one the election staff is experiencing.

“If the difference between two candidates is between certain degrees — in this case it’s .5% — an automatic recount kicks in. This is twice now we’ve had this, once in the November election,” he said. “It’s unusual to be two elections in a row.”

At 9 a.m. Wednesday in a tiny room in the courthouse, eight staff members fed ballots into machines for an audience of four. White observed the recount and answered questions from the public, explaining the process a ballot goes through.

“Bags come back from the polls, which were sealed at the polling place,” White said. “We check that the seal is unbroken, and two people transfer them to the room. We cut the seal, line up the ballots and run them through the machines.”

On the right side of the room, precinct ballots were run through one machine and mail-in/absentee ballots were processed through a machine on the other side.

White said they expect to count 47,534 ballots, with 32,191 of those being Republican ballots, which affect the Senate primary.

White explained that if precinct ballots were counted by one machine on election night, they would be counted on the second machine during the recount.

“It’s an extra layer of protection, so one ballot is counted by each machine. If the mail-ins were (counted) by the 400 (machine), we’ll use the 450 (machine) this time,” he said, referring to the model numbers of the two machines.

The machines count votes and alert if there is uncertainty on a ballot.

“They are programmed to look for certain names,” he said. “If it’s blank, the machine recognizes that, so the machine kicks it out, and we observe it by hand to see if it’s correct. Write-ins are the most common (occurrences).”

By 3 p.m., the staff had counted roughly 25 of 89 precincts, had finished counting provisional ballots and moved on to mail-in and absentee ballots.

White said it’s been “truly amazing” how many people have left the Senate race blank on their ballot.

“I’m shocked at how many blanks there are,” he said. “There (will be) no votes for Senate, but the rest is filled out.”

The machines recognize the blank spaces, White said, and kick the ballot out so it must be checked by hand. These types of ballots are called “under votes."

“There’s a surprising number of under votes, which is when you are supposed to vote for one and didn’t vote for any, or vote for three and voted for two ... To have this many is interesting. An over vote is when you vote for one person but someone votes for two.”

White said his goal is to finish the recount by 4:30 p.m. Thursday.

“Our goal is to report results by Friday,” he said. “So far, so good. A lot of our election staff have done this before after experiencing a recount in November. It’s a very technical process, lots of dotting i’s and crossing t’s.”

Counties must complete the recount by noon June 7 and report the results to the Department of State no later than noon on June 8.