Republican challenger Jamie Walsh declared victory today in the tumultuous 117th House District race.
The Luzerne County Bureau of Elections counted the votes for 12 provisional ballots on July 12. Walsh received seven votes, widening his three vote lead on incumbent Rep. Mike Cabell, who received five of the provisional votes.
Walsh now has a five vote lead on Cabell, with 4,735 votes to 4,730 votes, according to the county’s unofficial count.
But election chair Denise Williams said the race isn’t over. There are three active appeals standing in the way of a final decision. And those three appeals call into question a total of 30 votes.
“To call something out would be very premature for one because it could change. It’s not complete yet.”
And today’s count almost didn’t happen.
Gene Molino, the county’s assistant solicitor, said state law mandates that votes cannot be tabulated if there are active appeals on the race. However, he explained that the Commonwealth Court stipulated that the vote could proceed as long as the candidates agreed to it.
3 appeals, 30 votes
Walsh said today he may still appeal a July 1 Commonwealth Court ruling which decided two of the 30 votes in Cabell’s favor. In that case, the court approved Cabell’s request to count a provisional Butler Township ballot cast by his cousin, Shane O’Donnell, and to reject a provisional ballot cast by Lake Township voter Timothy Wagner.
The second appeal deals with Cabell asking for 22 write-ins to count. He has until later today to decide whether to appeal the court’s refusal to count the votes.
Walsh filed the third case, which asks the court to discount six mail-in ballots where voters didn’t fill in the “24” to complete the year on an envelope that already had the “20” part of the year. He has until Monday to decide whether to appeal the court’s refusal to throw out the votes.
Election integrity and ‘secret’ votes
Walsh and Cabell supporters both asked for the election bureau to read out the results for the 12 provisional ballots without voters’ names. Williams refused, citing precedent. Ballots were checked for signs of tampering in front of the public and then scanned into the bureau’s computer system. The results came out online within 30 minutes of the meeting.
Ben Herring, a Walsh supporter and member of the county’s Accountability, Conduct & Ethics Commission called the decision “unbelievable.”
“We had an opportunity to tabulate the votes, tell the voters what the real vote numbers were, without giving away names, no secrecy needed to be violated today. And then put them through the machines and let the machines match what the human being actually looked at, right? So, that would’ve put to rest so much of this concern over, y’know, are the machines broken, do they change votes when they get tabulated? They had such a great opportunity, and they missed it today,” said Herring.
Williams balked at the notion that the ballots were kept secret.
“When those went up on the screen…the public could all see. I actually heard people counting out the vote status. So, it was not secret at all and I don't know what his complaint was,” said Williams.
Walsh is confident that the bureau handled the ballots with integrity.
“I feel a lot better about the elections in Luzerne County. After watching everything we’ve been through in such a close race, [the election bureau is] under a microscope and they really did as much as they possibly could to affirm the people that things are good. And if we just follow the process and trust the process, everything will work out in the end,” said Walsh.
Cabell was not at the provisional vote meeting. His cousin, Shane O’Donnell was there as his representative and said Cabell would release a statement later today.
Following the meeting, Cabell could not be reached for comment to answer whether he would request a recount of the vote or appeal the 22 uncounted write-in ballots.
