Venango County election officials held a public voting machine testing Friday morning in the Courthouse Annex in preparation for Tuesday’s primary election.
The races for nominations for both Common Pleas judge positions and all three commissioner spots highlight the county primary ballots.
The number of mailings from the candidates over the last few weeks along with the many signs spread out across the county indicate there is a fair amount of interest in those countywide races along with some other contests.
Then the machine was closed up and won’t be reopened until Tuesday.
The county’s high speed ballot tabulator was also tested. The scanner has three trays that the ballots were sorted into as they were scanned — one tray for the ballots filled out in an unclear way or overvoted, one for blank ballots and one for all the ballots that have been properly filled out.
The practice ballots that were cast Friday won’t be counted.
More than 2,000 mail-in and absentee ballots have been sent out to date, and about 900 hadn’t been received at the election office as of Friday morning, Bailey said.
Four people from both the county Democratic and Republican parties will open and sort all the mail-in and absentee ballots Tuesday so they can be scanned and tabulated, Bailey said.
Both Bailey and Sabrina Backer with the elections office stressed that the count of how many ballots have been cast and how many voters have voted is checked several times on election day.
And they said the numbers are checked several more times over the course of tallying up the votes. The count can be verified several different ways to double check the numbers, Backer said.
Venango County commissioner Mike Dulaney, who is on the election board since he isn’t running for another term, said the high speed scanner and voting machine can’t be connected to the internet. He added that in Pennsylvania it is illegal for voting equipment to be connected to the internet.
County elections office personnel, the election board (made up of Dulaney and former county commissioners Vince Witherup and Bonnie Summers) and three members of the public attended the test.
Spotlight races
Three attorneys — Justin Fleeger, Matthew Kirtland and Greg Merkel — are battling for the Common Pleas judge nominations. They all have cross filed on both tickets, and both parties will choose two nominees.
Five Republicans — incumbent Sam Breene, Ken Bryan, Adam Craig, Bill Moon and Jim Speth — are seeking the two GOP commissioner nods, and incumbent Albert Abramovic and Matthew Beith are the only two listed candidates for the two Democratic commissioner nominations.
In addition, several other incumbent county row officers and incumbent district judge Patrick Lowrey are running without ballot opposition for re-election.
There are municipal races on the Republican ticket for Oil City mayor, Cranberry Township supervisor and Sugarcreek Borough council. And there are nine candidates vying for nominations for four seats on the Oil City School Board.
One county polling location has been moved for the primary as the Jackson Township precinct has been relocated from the Community Church of God to the township building at 217 Creek Road in Cooperstown.
Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Tuesday. All main-in or absentee ballots must be returned to the elections office by 8 p.m. Tuesday.
