County election may end in court
Anyone hoping for a final tally for the third seat on the Washington County Commission after the elections board rules on the status of challenged provisional ballots migh be disappointed.
As of Monday morning, Democrat Harlan Shober held a 38-vote lead over Republican challenger Mike McCormick in the commissioners’ race.
There are 35 provisional ballots in question, so even if McCormick captured 35 votes – an unlikely scenario – he would still trail Shober by 3.
The elections board, which includes attorneys Bradley Bassi, Kathleen Gustine and William Knestrick, is scheduled to convene its second meeting this week at noon Friday to decide the validity of 10 ballots challenged by Republican Mike McCormick and 15 ballots challenged by incumbent Democrat Harlan Shober, who ended election night with a 67-vote deficit.
The count of absentee ballots last Thursday put Shober ahead, and he gained another pair of votes when unchallenged provisional ballots were tabulated Monday.
If the board sustains any challenge to the remaining provisional ballots, a count of the ballot or ballots in question could be halted by the filing of a petition in Washington County Court.
“The county board’s decision can be appealed to Common Pleas Court for further review,” said Larry Spahr, Washington County elections director, on Tuesday.
Wes Parry, assistant director of elections for the county, said Tuesday he wanted the public to know “we are not the ones challenging the ballots. The candidates are challenging the ballots. We just administer.”
Meanwhile, McCormick said Monday that because he and Shober are separated by only hundredths of a percentage point, the margin is less than one-half of one percent that triggers, in some cases, an automatic recount.
He learned Tuesday when talking with Parry, that the law does not apply to countywide contests.
“The law for automatic recounts is only applicable to statewide races,” wrote Kaitlin Murphy, deputy press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of State, confirmed.
“However, a candidate can contest the results, which they would pay for out of pocket.”
Candidates must post a bond with the prothonotary for each precinct in which they are requesting a recount.
“The thing that’s before us is whether or not we want to petition the court for a recount,” McCormick said when contacted by phone Tuesday. “We’re going to come up short in the vote count.” So the question that now faces McCormick is whether to go to court, and, “If we do, when will we do that?”
According to the prothonotary’s office, which researched the cost for the elections office, there is a nonrefundable filing fee of $119.50 per precinct for a recount, plus a $50 cash bond that is forfeited if there is no change in the results. If there is a discrepancy in vote totals, it is up to a judge to decide if the cash bond should be refunded. Washington County has 176 voting precincts.
The canvass board, which was sworn in Friday, does not routinely process memory cards for voting precincts. Spahr said in the earlier days of electronic voting machines, which Washington County first used in 2006, he re-ran memory cards as a test but found “the numbers came out exactly” the same.
Democrat Larry Maggi and Republican Diana Irey Vaughan, both incumbents, finished first and second, respectively, securing seats on the commission.
The Shober-McCormick race is the first countywide contest to be so close in the era of touchscreen voting and the first affected by the provisional ballots created by the Help America Vote Act that took effect in 2004.
Other close elections have occurred in the past 36 years while other voting methods were used.
In 2003, during the punch-card era, Phyllis Ranko Matheny lost the Democratic nomination for prothonotary to Judith Fisher. Matheny, however, won the Republican nomination as a write-in candidate and went on to defeat Fisher by seven votes in the general election. Matheny took the oath of office in January 2004 with other elected officials even though Fisher had asked Judge Katherine B. Emery to stay Matheny’s certification as the winner of the election for prothonotary.
Emery denied the request for a stay, and Fisher took appeals on more than one issue to the state Supreme Court, which eventually blocked her bid for a recount. The case went back to Commonwealth Court, but Fisher dropped that phase of her appeal in September 2004, nearly a year after the general election.
In 1979, which was during the time of paper ballots, Herman Bigi defeated John C. Pettit in the primary for the Democratic nomination as the candidate for district attorney. Pettit, meanwhile, won a write-in vote for DA on the Republican ticket. On election night, Pettit appeared to have more votes than Bigi, but when absentee ballots were counted, Bigi won.
The Washington County Elections Board, made up of three judges, declared Pettit the winner because people had voted for candidates plus checking a third-party bid by Josephine Vincent as register of wills. Bigi appealed the matter, and District Attorney Jess D. Costa agreed to remain in office on an interim basis. This case also went to the state Supreme Court, which ruled in April 1980 that Bigi was the victor by 40 votes and ordered the election board to certify Bigi, who belatedly took the oath of office.
Provisional ballots did not exist when either the prothonotary’s or district attorney’s races were being tabulated. Congress created them after the ordeal of the 2000 presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore, giving the voting public a chance to cast a ballot rather than turn away people from the polls. The validity of the provisional, paper ballot and the registration status of the voter must be verified before provisional ballots are added to a candidate’s totals.