The Montgomery County Board of Elections shows a “sub-precinct” in Merion with only 19 voters – managed to cast 34 votes in the 2020 election.
Here’s what happened, according to Dori Sawyer who is the county’s Director of Elections.
Lower Merion 12-3 is a precinct in Merion. In 2020 they voted at 480 Latches Lane, located in the part of St. Joe’s campus that had previously been Episcopal Academy.
12-3 is one of two precincts in Lower Merion, and one of five in Montgomery County, that are split between two congressional districts.
12-2, the other split Lower Merion district, is divided almost evenly between the Fourth and Fifth Congressional Districts.
However, 12-3 has 1,281 registered voters in CD-4 (Madeleine Dean’s district) and only 19 registered voters in CD-5 (Mary Gay Scanlon’s district).
On Election Day, 2020, one or more of the officials in 12-3 handed out ballots for CD-5 to at least 15 voters, who should have been given ballots for CD-4.
So who benefitted and who got hurt by the screw-up?
The two congressional elections in CD-4 and CD-5 were the only races where the “irregularities” in 12-3 had an impact.
If Doug Mastriano gets to do his Forensic Audit, he’s going to have to find 80,555 votes somewhere else in order to prove that Donald Trump actually won Pennsylvania.
16 of the actual 19 registered voters in the CD-5 part of 12-3 (got that?) voted by mail. However, because of the ballot blunder, 18 voters are reported to have cast ballots on Election Day. And 11 of those 18 “walk-ins” voted for Trump. The same 11 (presumably) also voted for Dasha Pruett, the Republican candidate in CD-4.
So Dasha Pruett was the primary beneficiary of all this confusion. Her margin of defeat is understated by four votes. Officially Pruett lost to Mary Gay Scanlon by 116,191 votes, but now we all know that she really lost by 116,195 votes.
Kathy Barnette (who is now running for U.S. Senate) lost by four fewer votes than what has been officially reported. She was the Republican candidate who Madeleine Dean defeated in CD-4. Adjusting for the four vote swing that Pruett “stole” from her, Barnette lost to Dean by 84,707 votes.