Almost five months after primary election, Jamie Walsh officially became the winner of the Republican nomination for a Luzerne County state House seat Monday.
Three days after the state Supreme Court settled the last remaining question of which ballots should count, the county Board of Elections and Registration voted without dissent to certify Walsh’s four-vote victory in the 117th House District race against incumbent Rep. Mike Cabell.
Cabell has until next Monday to decide whether to ask for a recount of votes, the last possible way of changing the outcome. The county must begin mailing overseas and military ballots by Saturday.
The first-term representative from Butler Township in Luzerne County said Friday he’s considering asking the county Court of Common Pleas for a recount. Efforts to reach him Monday for a more definitive answer were unsuccessful.
The board added one vote to Cabell’s total Monday, a vote cast by his first cousin, Shane O’Donnell. It did that because the Supreme Court denied Walsh’s appeal of O’Donnell’s vote.
Barring changes from a recount, Walsh received 4,735 votes to Cabell’s 4,731, in what the state Department of State says was one of the closest primary elections in a House race in state history. With no Democratic candidate on the Nov. 5 election ballot, Walsh will cruise to victory unless a write-in candidacy defeats him.
In a telephone interview Monday afternoon, Walsh, who led the unofficial count by various, sometimes shrinking margins since the April 23 primary election, said he’s elated the race is finally over.
“I respect the fact that the election bureau and the board, really took their time made sure the counts were accurate,” said Walsh, a gutter installation company owner from Ross Township. “I mean, it was just (because) that was the process. But I don't think anybody expected this process to take five, almost five months. But we're here.”
The Supreme Court upheld a Commonwealth Court ruling that overturned a Luzerne County Court ruling on two provisional ballots, O’Donnell’s and that of voter Tim Wagner.
Cabell argued Wagner’s vote shouldn’t count because he signed the outer envelope of his provisional ballot once instead of twice as required by state law. Walsh contended the vote by O’Donnell, a former Butler Township resident, shouldn’t counted because he voted at his old address instead of his new one in Schuylkill County outside the district.
O’Donnell’s voter registration address changed to Schuylkill County in December when he renewed his driver’s license. O’Donnell said his vote should count because he moved into his new home March 29, or within 30 days of the election, the allowable period under state law.
The county court ruled against counting O’Donnell’s vote and for counting Wagner’s. The Commonwealth Court reversed that, and the Supreme Court upheld that ruling.
The outcome also took so long because the two candidates fought over whether 22 potential write-in votes should count and whether six mail-in votes should be removed from the totals. The Commonwealth Court ruled the write-ins shouldn’t count because both men were already listed on the ballot and the court also declined to remove mail-in ballots, ruling the lack of a “24” to show the year on the outer envelope of the mail-in ballots was not a good enough reason.
Walsh said he doubts Cabell can come up with valid reasons for a recount.
To recount all 40 voting precincts, Walsh said he will argue Cabell must find three voters in each precinct and proof of errors or fraud. That’s “a major uphill battle,” Walsh said his lawyer told him.
“You can't just say, ‘Hey, I want to recount, and I'll pay for it,’ and you’re off and running,” Walsh said. “He has to get 120 people to sign an affidavit that they believe that there was some sort of error, fraud — and there's just nothing. There's nothing. If nothing's come out in five months, what's now going to come out now that there was some kind of failure or whatever?”
The 117th district includes Black Creek, Butler, Conyngham, Dennison, Dorrance, Fairmount, Foster, Hollenback, Hunlock, Huntington, Lake, Lehman, Nescopeck, Ross, Salem, Slocum, Sugarloaf and Union townships and Conyngham, Dallas, Freeland, Harveys Lake, Jeddo, Nescopeck, New Columbus, Nuangola, Penn Lake Park, Shickshinny and White Haven boroughs.
