GOP challenges results as Lamb declares victory
Republican Tim Murphy. Mr. Murphy resigned after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that he asked a woman with whom he was having an affair to get an abortion, despite his public stance as a pro-life Republican.
The seat had been safely Republican for more than a decade and national Republican organizations spent millions supporting Mr. Saccone. But Mr. Lamb mounted a strong challenge and apparently was aided by a roughly 45 percent voter turnout across the four counties in the district.
President Donald Trump broke his silence on the election Wednesday night at a private fundraiser for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley, telling a crowd of donors that Mr. Lamb had run “a pretty smart race, actually,” according to an audio recording of the remarks obtained by The Atlantic.
“The young man last night that ran, he said, ‘Oh, I’m like Trump. Second Amendment, everything. I love the tax cuts, everything.’ He ran on that basis,” Mr. Trump said. “He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me. I said, ‘Is he a Republican? He sounds like a Republican to me.’”
Later on, he stressed Mr. Lamb’s appeal to many bluecollar conservatives, saying, “But I guess when you’re running in a certain area, that’s probably a good tactic.”
He also attempted to downplay the race’s significance. “It’s actually interesting, because it’s only a congressman for five months,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the fact that the district will likely be redrawn ahead of the midterm elections in November. “I don’t know about that one, Josh. It was a lot of work for five months.”
In the 18th, Republicans are investigating a number of purported Election Day irregularities, including problems with the machines, voters being told to go to the wrong polling places, and Republican attorneys being barred from overseeing the counting of absentee ballots in Allegheny County.
In a letter to Allan Opsitnick, the solicitor for the county’s election division, attorney Kathleen Gallagher wrote that the county had violated the state election code by preventing attorney Russell Giancola to monitor the vote computation. Mr. Giancola was eventually allowed to oversee the process, the letter said, but “the delay deprived the [Saccone] campaign of the right to have counsel present during the computation reporting process.”
The letter also argues that a state Supreme Court effort to redraw congressional district lines shortly before the May primary had added to voter confusion. Given that, Ms. Gallagher asserted, “transparency is critical to the establishment and maintenance of a proper election process and voter confidence in [it].”
County spokeswoman Amie Downs said that on Election Day there had been discussions with Republican attorneys about their ability to oversee the votecounting process. Under the state election code, she said, such observers must have a signed authorization from the chair of the county committee. “They didn’t produce that until the very end of the evening, when the ballots had already been scanned,” she said.
Mark Wolosik, who directs the county’s elections office, said that late Tuesday morning, “a call came in asking about people being able to observe the [counting] process on election night.”
Usually, he said, “people ask ahead of time” rather than on Election Day itself.
Phone messages were exchanged over the following hours, and eventually two Republican attorneys arrived at the central tabulation center, located in Pittsburgh. Mr. Wolosik said that an attorney identified himself as being “from the Saccone campaign,” but the election code only allows political parties, not candidates, to deputize observers. A lawyer later produced an email purporting to show such authorization, but Mr. Wolosik said he couldn’t accept that because “there was no signature.” He swore in the observer after receiving a signed authorization.
The absentee ballots themselves are run through an optical scanner that records the vote, and the ballots are preserved afterward, meaning a recount is possible should one be ordered. Ordinarily, for both absentee and in-person voters, election workers compare the number of votes cast to the number of voters logged in by poll workers on Election Day, to make sure the numbers correspond. Court challenges could of course complicate that process, but otherwise, “if there’s no discrepancy on the face, then we accept the count as accurate,” Mr. Wolosik said
Ultimately, the count is certified by the Board of Elections, which consists of Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and the two at-large members of Allegheny County Council: Democrat John DeFazio and Republican Sam DeMarco. The board is slated to meet April 2.
D. Raja, chair of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County, did not return a call for comment Wednesday.
Ms. Downs added that prior to providing the authorization, the Republican observer was allowed to watch from the doorway, and that the Democrats had no observers on hand for the ballot counting in Washington County.
There were numerous reports Tuesday of voters being confused about whether they lived within the 18th, whether as a result of a saturation-bombing TV campaign or of confusion stemming from a court battle over whether district lines should be redrawn later this year. But the county reported only a couple of isolated problems with voting machines, including low battery power and a blank screen on one machine. There were no reports of “calibration errors,” Ms. Downs said, in which touching the screen in one place results in a box elsewhere being checked.
Elsewhere in the district, the number of problems was relatively small, according to elections officials.
Greene County officials sent technicians to two polling places to address calibration problems, where the machines were attempting to mark a different candidate than the one the voter selected. The problem was resolved quickly and the correct votes were logged, according to elections officials.
“They were taken care of immediately, and there was only a few of those, and that’s basically normal,” said Tina Kiger, director of elections and voter registration for Greene County.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, officials received about 20 calls from Greene and Westmoreland county residents who were confused by the option to vote “straight party” or by selecting an individual candidate. If both options are selected, the machines defer to the selection for the individual candidate.
In Westmoreland County, one voting machine “crashed” and elections officials couldn’t receive a count for five votes, according to state officials. County officials there consulted with their solicitor, state officials and the manufacturer, then “extracted the case vote records while preserving the integrity of the original vote-casting media,” according to Wanda Murren, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State.
The state had not received any official complaints about voting problems as of about 4 p.m. Wednesday, Ms. Murren said.
To request a recount, voters must petition their county board of elections or a Common Pleas Court.
The state election code requires officials to keep voting terminals sealed or locked for at least 20 days or longer, unless a court order overrides that.
In the event of a recount, the county board of elections must examine the vote totals produced by each voting machine.
Votes cast by paper must be tallied again by hand or by a different type of electronic machine than the one used in the first counting.