Elections

Allegheny County to Count 2,349 Undated Ballots

Published

3 years ago

November 11, 2020

On Tuesday, The Allegheny County Board of Elections in Pittsburgh, PA voted to count 2,349 ballots that were mailed without dates, Fox News is reporting.

The Board of Elections voted 2 to 1 to count those votes.

Councilman Sam DeMarco voted against the motion, stating that he would side with the law as it is written, which says the ballot mailing envelope must contain the date.

The ballots arrived on or before Election Day and were stamped with a date when they were received, according to Elections employees.

“They applied on time, received their ballots, voted their ballots, returned them on time with their signature, their printed name, their address. The only thing they’re missing is their date,” said county solicitor Andrew Szefi. “They were received timely, and our ballot sorting machine imprints a date received on each envelope as they’re scanned.”

The undated ballots will be further analyzed to confirm they are eligible ballots. So far, more than 2,600 ballots have been deemed ineligible after review.

Szefi explained that envelopes without dates will only be counted once they are throughly reviewed and meet the standards of an eligible ballot. If an undated ballot was a “naked ballot” — not placed within the secrecy envelope — or if the secrecy envelope had markings on it, it wouldn’t be counted.

On Monday, The Trump Campaign filed a lawsuit against Secretary of the Commonwealth, Kathy Boockvar and the boards of election in Allegheny and six other counties. The lawsuit claims equal protection violations, including an illegal, two-tiered voting system that treated voters who sent mail-in ballots differently than those who voted in person. The lawsuit also alleges that in-person voters were required to show identification while mail-in voters were not.

Economy

House passes debt-ceiling deal with support from two thirds of GOP caucus

Published

1 week ago

June 1, 2023

Sara Carter Staff

After hours of debate, the House voted Wednesday night to approve a bipartisan debt-ceiling deal, taking a step toward averting a default on U.S. debt. The measure passed with 314 members voting in favor and 117 members voting in opposition. 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats voted to approve the bill, while 71 Republicans and 46 Democrats voted against it.

National Review writes the measure’s passage secures “a victory for House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who managed to keep his caucus together despite a challenge from House Freedom Caucus members intent on securing greater spending concessions from the Biden White House.”

The bill will now head to the Senate. McCarthy said the measure is the “largest spending cut that Congress has ever voted for,” but faced opposition from members of his caucus who believe the deal “didn’t go far enough in restoring pre-Covid spending levels.”

In his speech on the House floor Wednesday before the vote, McCarthy pleaded with his colleagues to support what he had bargained for with Biden:

“They demanded a clean debt limit, which really means they spend more and you pay more in taxes. House Republicans said ‘no’,” McCarthy said.“Over the past four months, we fought hard to change how Washington works. We stopped the Democrats from writing a blank check after the largest spending binge in American history… The Fiscal Responsibility Act is the biggest spending cut in American history.”

National Review reports:

The agreement suspends the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt limit through January 1, 2025, and caps spending in the 2024 and 2025 budgets.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the deal will reduce budget deficits by about $1.5 trillion between 2023 and 2033. Director of the CBO Phillip Swagel projected that there would be reductions in discretionary outlays of $1.3 trillion over the 2024–2033 period. Mandatory spending would decrease by $10 billion, revenues would decrease by $2 billion over the same period, and the interest on the public debt would decline by $188 billion.

Biden warned of the consequences of default, saying what would follow would include an economic recession, devastated retirement accounts, and millions of jobs lost.

“I made clear from the start of negotiations that the only path forward was a bipartisan budget agreement,” explained Biden on Twitter. “No one got everything they wanted. But that’s the responsibility of governing.”