Appellate Court Recount Begins

A statewide recount begins today in the Democratic Primary race for a seat on Commonwealth Court.
Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele ordered the recount because the vote margin between Katherine Boockvar and Barbara Ernsberger was less than point 5 percent of the total votes cast. In the unofficial results, Boockvar edged Ernsberger by 2,116 votes.....a margin of point 34 percent. Ernsberger had the option to waive the recount but decided to proceed.

The recount must begin in all counties no later than June 1 and be completed by June 7.
Allegheny County Director of Elections Mark Wolosik says they will begin at 9 o'clock this morning.....
"We will compare the totals that were written to the flash memory cards. It's a different way of storing vote totals than the cartridges that get read in on election night. We will compare these totals that were generated by the precinct officials on election night. We will manually look at these numbers."

Wolosik says the second step in the process is to count the approximate 3,000 Democratic absentee ballots.
Unofficial results from Allegheny County had Pittsburgh attorney Ernsberger with 79,952 votes and Boockvar with 23,277 votes.
Each candidate is allowed to appoint one representative and the party is permitted 2 representatives to observe the recount process. He says the recount should take about a day and a half.
Results of the recounts in all 67 counties must be submitted to the Secretary of the Commonwealth by noon June 8. Aichele will then announce the final outcome of the election. The last statewide recount, in 2009, cost approximately $542,000. This cost will be paid by the state as required by law.