READING, Pa. \u2013 Berks County Commissioner Michael Rivera, chair of the board of elections, reviewed some voter number statistics at Thursday\u2019s regular board of elections meeting.<\/p>\n
Rivera reported that in the May 19 primary there were a total of 51,612 ballots cast.<\/p>\n
Of that total, 25,937 were Democrats and 25,675 were Republicans.<\/p>\n
The total voter turnout was 23.22%, with the Democrat voter turnout being 24.9% and the Republican voter turnout being 21.73%.<\/p>\n
On absentee ballots, Rivera said there were a total of 19,855 mail-in ballots issued and 11,436 Democrat ballots were returned and 4,861 Republican ballots were returned.<\/p>\n
The total mail-in ballots counted was 16,297, which equates to a return rate of 82.08 percent.<\/p>\n
There were 224 provisional ballots submitted, with 77 being rejected for various purposes, but mainly due to the wrong party or that there was no party affiliation.<\/p>\n
Only members of the Democrat and Republican parties are permitted to vote in primary elections since Pennsylvania does not allow open primaries.<\/p>\n
In other business, the board voted to refer to two election-related matters to the District Attorney\u2019s Office for further investigation.<\/p>\n
The first stems from multiple complaints from a constituent regarding text messages that from a New Jersey phone number that were campaign advertisements using the likeness of an individual but did not contain the required advertiser disclaimer.<\/p>\n
The second involved an employee in the call center on Election Day who made changes to their own registration record.<\/p>\n
Because the deadline for updating registration has passed, the matter falls under the law that criminalizes unauthorized changes to ensure the integrity of the election.<\/p>\n
Solicitor Cody Kauffman said at first he felt it was an isolated employee matter but had since learned that a second employee in the call center also made changes to a registration which was not their own.<\/p>\n
Kauffman said it is a misdemeanor of the first degree to intentionally insert or permit an insertion in a registration record without proper authorization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 Berks County Commissioner Michael Rivera, chair of the board of elections, reviewed some voter number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[10073,20937,18485,90177,128,130,129,7573],"class_list":["post-204600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county-board-of-elections","tag-cody-kauffman","tag-michael-rivera","tag-open-primaries","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-voter-turnout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}