Officials tally paper ballots for Senate race
About two days after polls closed, Washington County officials finished counting Democratic primary ballots in the race for U.S. Senate.
County Elections Director Larry Spahr said officials finished tallying paper ballots Thursday afternoon, with former state Environmental Secretary Katie McGinty garnering a plurality of votes in the county, mirroring the outcome of the overall race.
She will face Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Lehigh Valley in November.
A total of 27,681 paper ballots were cast in the county.
Democratic voters received paper ballots for the Senate primary after a state Supreme Court decision reversing a lower court’s decision to strike candidate Joseph Vodvarka’s name from the ballot.
Elections officials opted to give voters printed ballots because they said there was not time to update the county’s 750 electronic voting machines and test them for accuracy. Washington was the only county in Pennsylvania that took that route. Other counties that had removed Vodvarka’s name from the ballot asked voters who wanted to cast a ballot for him to write in his name.
McGinty, of Chester County, received 11,030 votes in the county – about 40 percent of the total.
Braddock Mayor John Fetterman came in second, with 7,452, or about 27 percent.
Retired Navy Admiral Joe Sestak came in third, with 5,522, or about 20 percent. Vodvarka, a retiree from the Pittsburgh area, was in a distant fourth, receiving 1,861 votes, or about 7 percent.
Elections officials plan to begin counting absentee ballots for the 46th Legislative District this morning. Joseph Szpara has a 102-vote lead over Jesse White in the race for the Democratic nomination for state reprentative with about 175 ballots to be counted.