Just one week after the presidential election, court challenges are already being filed, including in Centre County where there is a new, civil lawsuit.
Centre County did have several Election Day setbacks including a bomb threat at election headquarters, and then a software problem with ballot tabulating machines, which slowed the vote count.
At a county election board meeting, a few days later, Centre County Republican chairwoman, Michelle Schellberg, previewed possible court challenges.
“Election Day was pretty much chaos. I’d like you to consider that this last minute decision to open a satellite office on campus might have been the cause of that. Pulling resources from preparing for the election to that office instead of preparing machines. Details that could have been better paid attention to.”
The suit, filed by Schellberg, on behalf of several other voters, doesn’t mention the county’s satellite election office. Instead, the suit claims Centre County would be violating state law in how it plans to conduct a statistical recount of the votes cast, which is required in every county after a primary and general election.
The county board of elections can review a random sample of two percent of voter ballots as an audit of election results.
According to the suit, Centre County plans to only review two percent of in person ballots cast at polling places on Election Day, which the suit claims will disenfranchise the nearly 20 percent of voters who voted by mail-in ballots.
The suit is asking for a judge to order the county to include all ballots in the random election results recount.