Allegheny County election officials began adding provisional ballots to the county’s vote count Tuesday, while the board of elections began deciding which challenged ballots can be counted.

The process of counting those ballots could take days because there are fewer staff than the county that worked on election night to go through them, according to county spokeswoman Abigail Gardner.

The results of this careful process could impact the U.S. Senate race. The Associated Press declared Republican Dave McCormick the winner, but Democrat Bob Casey has yet to concede, saying there are more than 100,000 ballots outstanding and he could win enough to win the race . McCormick had a lead of about 35,000 votes statewide as of Tuesday afternoon.

There were 12,680 provisional ballots cast in the county, although the three-member Board of Elections made a decision Friday that will disqualify hundreds of them. In accordance with the county’s legal recommendations, the board voted not to count ballots from voters who cast provisional ballots even if they were not registered in Allegheny County.

Lawyers for Republican Dave McCormick and Democrat Bob Casey were on hand to argue their case at the election warehouse on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Casey’s attorney, Mike Healey, argued that their campaign found a provisional voter whose registration had not yet appeared in the system but who was registered in the county on Election Day. McCormick’s attorney, Thomas Breth, did not object to the inclusion of this ballot.

Casey’s campaign also filed an objection, saying anyone who recently moved to another county, but not yet registered to vote in their new county, should be allowed to return to vote one last time in their old county. But Casey’s campaign did not present evidence Tuesday that such voters exist.

McCormick’s campaign withdrew the challenge to hundreds of ballots on the grounds that voters had incorrectly dated them. Both parties agreed that a challenge to election dates was not relevant to provisional ballots because provisional ballots can only be cast on Election Day.

The Board of Elections also voted unanimously to count the votes of all provisional ballots that were not signed by the two election officials required to certify a provisional ballot. The county legal department argued, with Healey, that a voter should not be disqualified because of staff error.

“We’re talking about an election official error,” Healey said. “The voter did nothing wrong. The voter did everything he was supposed to do.»

McCormick’s campaign argued otherwise, saying election workers’ signatures were a legal requirement. “We understand the argument that election officials would be required to sign this document,” Breth said. “This is not a subjective determination, it is objectively, on its face invalid because these signatures are not on the ballot.»

The only decision the board made that wasn’t unanimous was whether to count ballots from voters who signed their names only once rather than twice, like this is required. Republican Sam DeMarco voted against accepting those votes, while Democrats Sara Innamorato and Bethany Hallam voted in favor.

The McCormick campaign argued that it was not the job of election officials to ensure that voters follow instructions, while the Casey campaign argued that election officials are required to sign their names after voters have signed their name and, therefore, the election workers should have noticed it. the second signature missing.

The board briefly discussed what to do about 174 undated or incorrectly dated absentee ballots. Legal debates over those ballots have continued in recent years, with the state Supreme Court’s most recent ruling saying those votes could not be counted.

The board has taken no action on this matter. County officials said all contested provisional ballots would be conducted separately until the period during which campaigns are allowed to appeal has passed.

The Board of Elections will meet Monday next week to make final decisions on provisional ballots that were not adjudicated Tuesday.