The county’s review of its vote counting procedures in the 2020 election began Wednesday, and ballots from one of the three precincts selected for the review will be counted Monday.

County commissioners along with solicitor Wil White, who is serving as the interim director of elections, discussed the review at the commissioners meeting Wednesday before the review began at noon.

The results of all races in the 2020 election in the Middlesex Township South, Donegal Township and Butler City 4-1 precincts will be counted by machine and by hand, and the results will be compared to determine the time, staffing needs and cost to conduct hand counts.

The three precincts were selected at random for the review. Officials decided to start with the Butler precinct because it had the fewest number of registered voters among those precincts.

By mid-afternoon Wednesday, White and elections department staff had found all the ballots cast at the Butler precinct, and had gone through eight of the 24 boxes of all county mail-in and absentee ballots looking for those submitted for the Butler precinct.

A total of 600 ballots were cast including 397 at the precinct, 192 by mail and 11 by provisional ballots.

The county commissioners, who also serve on the board of elections, observed the work.

Every ballot submitted in the county has to be run through a machine three times to identify the ballots from the three selected precincts, and separate them from the rest of the ballots, White said.

The ballots from the other two precincts will be separated after the Butler ballots are separated. Regardless of the progress made, the ballots from the Butler precinct will be counted Monday, White said.

Ballots will be divided into groups of 100 for the counts. From each ballot, White said he will read aloud the votes cast in all seven races that appeared on the ballot, and those votes will be documented. The ballots will then be scanned using the same machines used in the 2020 election.

The results of the hand count and the scanned count will be compared, he said. The process will start over if the number of votes found in the hand count and scan don’t match, he said.

Leslie Osche, chairwoman of the commissioners, said the results of the review will be shared with other counties and the state.

An election commission established after the 2020 election recommended conducting an annual review of vote counting procedures, Osche said. Ensuring election integrity is the ultimate goal, she added.

Commissioner Kevin Boozel said the review grew from questions and “national discontent” surrounding mail-in voting in that election, but the review is needed because complacency set in after years of no changes in voting and vote counting rules before mail-in voting was expanded.

The review is also a response to constituents who called for a public and transparent review of those election results, said Commissioner Kim Geyer.

Catherine Lalonde, chairwoman of the county Democratic Party, told commissioners that people who still refuse to accept that former President Donald Trump lost the election won’t be satisfied with reviewing only three precincts.

She said 65% of county voters are registered Republicans and Trump received 65% of the vote in the county. No election fraud has been discovered and none will be found in the county review, she said.

Another resident who addressed the commissioners said Clearfield Township should be included in the review because of problems that occurred there on Election Day.

The county’s search for a new elections director is entering its second phase after the panel that interviewed the first group of candidates didn’t recommend any of them for a second interview with the commissioners, Osche said.

Commissioners said there were four of five people in the initial group of candidates, and the position has been re-advertised.

Aaron Sheasley, the former director of elections, said the commissioners terminated him in April. He was hired in July 2020.

In a separate election matter, the commissioners agreed to apply for up to $700,000 in Election Integrity grant funds from the state.

White said the money can be used for printing ballots, preparing voting machines, training election staff and paying poll workers.

To qualify for the grant, the commissioners had to commit to not receiving any election funding from third parties, to begin counting election ballots at 7 a.m. on Election Day, and to continue that ballot counting uninterrupted until it is complete.

The grant provides $5.15 per registered voter, and there are 135,235 registered voters in the county, White said.