Tuesday, November 04, 2003

By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

A federal judge is expected to rule this morning whether 937 hand-delivered absentee ballots will be counted in today's election.

U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti issued a temporary restraining order on Friday requiring the Allegheny County elections board to separate all hand-delivered ballots from those that were mailed after the county Republican Party filed a last-minute challenge to board policy.

The elections board initially ruled that no absentee ballots would be accepted from third parties.

Last week the board modified those rules, allowing a voter to designate someone to deliver the ballot along with an affidavit that it hadn't been tampered with.

A hearing on the issue of whether those rules are allowed under state law had been scheduled for yesterday in state court. But it was rendered moot Friday when the Republican Party filed a complaint in federal court asking Conti to hold the hand-delivered ballots out of the election.

Lawyers for the Democratic Party and the county argued yesterday that the absentee ballot system is fair and that federal court has no jurisdiction over a state election. A lawyer for the Republican Party argued that the elections board has allowed some ballots to be hand-delivered by surrogates of those "in the know" while everyone else has to follow the rules.

The county Elections Division estimates that 390,000 votes will be cast in today's balloting.

It has received 9,000 absentee ballots, 937 of which were hand-delivered. The rest were mailed. Of those hand-delivered, 287 came in before Common Pleas Judge James McGregor issued an order Oct. 22 requiring the person delivering the ballot to be the same as the one casting it.

A total of 97 arrived after the elections board voted Oct. 27 to allow ballots to be delivered by someone other than the voter provided they filled out a form saying they had received authorization by the voter to do so.

Among those who have voted by absentee ballot for this election are U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan and Teresa Heinz, widow of the late U.S. Sen. John Heinz.

Buchanan and Heinz had ballots delivered by surrogates. Attorney Wendell Freeland, a member of the county elections board, hand-delivered a ballot on behalf of his wife.

E-mail this story   Print this story