Berks County Vote Count Grows to 144,824; Certification Set

Berks County's unofficial count of the Nov. 3 election now stands at 144,824 ballots, 711 of them provisional, after the county replaced its results report late Thursday afternoon, hours after the Election Board heard Republican challenges to provisional ballots, by the Reading Eagle's account. The five-day inspection window the agenda set runs through 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19, the county's mandatory 2 percent audit is Tuesday, Nov. 17, and a legal ad published Friday sets a special Board of Elections meeting for Friday, Nov. 20, at 12 p.m. to certify the vote.

What happened inside Thursday's hearing is known only from the Reading Eagle. The county has posted no minutes, no video and no notice about the hearing's outcome, and its Election Board agenda is unchanged since Nov. 10. Nor is there a record of the votes the agenda scheduled after the hearing: authorizing the Unofficial Returns Reporting Form for the Department of State, accepting the unofficial canvass and opening the inspection period, and approving the Oct. 22 minutes. The commissioners' own 10 a.m. meeting that morning has no record of any kind yet, so the fate of its $7.2 million budget shuffle and the $16 million Berks Heim transfer is unknown.

What the county's new report shows

The county's summary report was replaced at the same link at 5:04 p.m. Thursday, by the server's timestamp, and is stamped "Election Summary - 11/12/2026 04:58PM." It still carries the header "UNOFFICIAL RESULTS," and the county's results page still says, "Results displayed are incomplete and unofficial." Page 1 shows 144,824 ballots cast by 275,939 registered voters: 115,924 on Election Day, 28,189 by mail and 711 provisional, a turnout of 52.48 percent. The 276-page precinct report was replaced in the same minute.

This is the third version of the report. The election-night version, generated at 11:41 p.m. Nov. 3, showed 143,855 ballots and zero provisionals; the version stamped Nov. 10 at 4:18 p.m. showed 144,620 ballots, 700 provisional, and 52.41 percent turnout, as our preview reported. Thursday's version adds 204 ballots to the Nov. 10 count, by our arithmetic: 193 more mail ballots and 11 more provisionals, with the Election Day column unchanged, by Berks Beat's saved copy of the Nov. 10 version (115,924 Election Day, 27,996 mail, 700 provisional). The county has not said what the 204 ballots are or why the mail column grew nine days after the election.

In the governor's race (p. 2), Josh Shapiro has 79,901 votes, Stacy Garrity 61,741 and Ken Krawchuk 2,120. The provisional column now adds 496 votes for Shapiro, 179 for Garrity and 15 for Krawchuk, up from 490, 175 and 15 in the Nov. 10 version. The congressional races are on p. 2, the state Senate on p. 3 and the state House on pp. 3-5. The closest Berks-only margin is the 44th Senate District's Berks portion, Katie Muth 1,704 to Melissa Dicranian 1,694 (p. 3), a 10-vote gap that decides nothing by itself because the district spans several counties.

The hearing, as the Reading Eagle reported it

The agenda listed the hearing as "A hearing on the provisional ballot challenges filed by authorized representatives of the Berks County Republican Committee" and nothing more. The Reading Eagle reported Thursday afternoon that the hearing concerned challenges filed by representatives of the county Republican Party, and its account describes one challenger: Jeffrey Wolfe, a Brecknock Township resident, who challenged three provisional ballots the county had rejected because the electronic poll books showed those voters as having already voted. Neither the agenda nor the Eagle gives a total number of challenges filed.

Per the Eagle, First Assistant County Solicitor Cody Kauffman told the board the ballots were rejected because the records showed the voters had voted, but that poll workers appear to have mixed up voters who share a first and last name, a junior and a senior, so the second to arrive was shown as having already voted. "A senior will show up and check in as the junior," Kauffman said, as the Eagle quoted him. The Eagle reported that Wolfe asked for a review of the poll books and ballots, with interviews of the voters, and for the ballots to be counted if no fraud turned up; and that the commissioners, sitting as the Election Board, agreed the cases should be reviewed and the ballots counted if it can be established with certainty that the voters were not at fault. The story records no vote tally, resolution number or appeal. Under Section 1210(a.4) of the Election Code, anyone "aggrieved by the decision" has two days to appeal to the county court, as our preview explained.

The Eagle's totals do not match the county's. The Eagle reported, citing Election Services data announced at the meeting, 144,628 ballots cast, 27,996 by mail and 708 provisional; its story was published at 1:30 p.m. The county's report stamped 4:58 p.m. says 144,824, 28,189 and 711. That puts three provisional counts in view: 700 in the Nov. 10 version, 708 announced at the meeting per the Eagle, and 711 at 4:58 p.m.; 708 less 700 is 8, and 711 less 708 is 3, by our arithmetic. The Eagle's account has the board agreeing to count three challenged ballots if the voters were not at fault; the county has not said what the three ballots added after the meeting are, and has not explained the 196-ballot difference between the total announced at the meeting and the report. The Eagle's mail figure, 27,996, matches the Nov. 10 version's by Berks Beat's saved copy.

No recount

Thursday at 5 p.m. was also the deadline for the state to order a recount. Under Section 1404(g) of the Election Code, the Secretary of the Commonwealth must order a statewide recount and recanvass if the counties' unofficial returns show a candidate for an office on every ballot in Pennsylvania "was defeated by one-half of a percent or less of the votes cast for the office," and must issue that order "by five o'clock P. M. of the second Thursday following the day of the election," with notice by press release or website. As of 6:35 a.m. Friday, the Department of State's newsroom listed no such order; its newest release was dated Nov. 3. The governor's race is the only contest on the county's report that appears on every ballot in the state, and the deadline passed without an order.

What happens next

The inspection window set by the agenda runs from 8 a.m. Friday, Nov. 13, to 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19. Section 1404(f) says the returns "shall be considered unofficial for five (5) days," and that if no petition for a recount or recanvass is filed in that time, "the county board shall certify the returns so computed in said county." The agenda does not say where to inspect them; the Office of Election Services is on the first floor of the Services Center, 633 Court St., Reading, 610-478-6490. The Eagle reported that the window is also when candidates file petitions to have variations of their names counted toward their totals.

On Tuesday, Nov. 17, the county will run what its Election Services office calls "the mandatory 2% audit of the votes cast during the 2026 General Election," per a notice posted Thursday. It begins at 9 a.m. on the third floor of 600 Penn Street, the former Wells Fargo tower the county is buying, per our tracker. Each party on the ballot may have up to four observers at a time, three of whom may take part in the audit "if authorized by their party and confirmed with the Office of Election Services"; would-be observers should contact their party's local committee. Section 1117-A of the Election Code requires a recount of a random sample of ballots, by a different method than the election used, of "at least two (2) per centum of the votes cast or two thousand (2,000) votes whichever is the lesser." Two percent of 144,824 ballots is 2,896, by our arithmetic, so the legal floor here is 2,000 votes; the notice does not say how many will be pulled.

Certification is scheduled for the day after the window closes. A Reading Eagle legal ad dated Friday, Nov. 13, on publicnoticepa.com says a special meeting of the Board of Elections "will be held on Friday, November 20, 2026, commencing at 12 p.m., for the purpose of accumulating write-ins, breaking ties and certifying the votes cast" in the Nov. 3 election; the search-results excerpt cuts off mid-sentence, the full notice sits behind a challenge page, and the excerpt shows no location. The county's meetings calendar, whose upcoming list ran only through Nov. 18 on Friday morning, did not yet show it. The Election Code's outside deadline for certifying to the state, Section 302(k)'s "third Monday following the primary or election," falls on Nov. 23 by the reckoning of a 2026 certification guide from Protect Democracy, the Brennan Center and the Campaign Legal Center, as our preview noted. After the May primary, the board certified at a special meeting June 5, per our primary turnout report.

The commissioners' votes: no record

The Board of Commissioners met at 10 a.m. Thursday, an hour before the Election Board, with Resolution 350.2026 ($7,169,686 in budget transfers and $3,584,166 in new appropriations), the $16,024,020 intergovernmental transfer for Berks Heim, Resolution 364.2026 on the Security Committee, Resolution 365.2026 rewriting the rules for public participation in meetings, and the $100,000 McCormick Taylor amendment on the agenda, per our preview. Whether any of it passed is not on the record. The county's rolling agenda file is still the Nov. 12 packet, byte for byte, unchanged since 8:29 a.m. Wednesday by the server's timestamp, so the draft minutes that normally ride in the next packet have not appeared; the meeting notice links no minutes or video; the newest minutes on the county's open-data hub are from Oct. 29; BCTV's video archive lists no Nov. 12 video, its newest commissioners meeting being Nov. 5; and the county's press releases stop at Nov. 3. The Election Board's minutes on the hub end at Oct. 15. We will report the votes when a record posts.

How to check your provisional ballot, or attend

Provisional voters can check whether their ballot counted at the state's provisional ballot search by entering the ballot number, or by calling 1-877-868-3772, per the county's Nov. 10 notice. Our guide to your rights at the polls explains when a provisional ballot is offered, and our 2026 election guide collects the cycle's dates. The Nov. 20 certification meeting is public, but the legal ad excerpt gives no address and the county had posted no notice as of Friday morning; the board's Nov. 12 meeting was in the 13th-floor boardroom at 633 Court Street with a Teams link on its notice, per our preview.