The Central Susquehanna Valley’s four counties will receive nearly $16,000 of a total $1.3 million in state reimbursement to be shared by all 67 counties to perform a recount of the Nov. 3 election returns for Pennsylvania Superior Court judge.
A state law, enacted in 2004, requires a recount in each county on any statewide race that results in a difference between candidates of less than one-half of 1 percent of the total number of votes cast. This reportedly is the first time such a recount has been necessary.
Nine candidates were running for four seats on the Superior Court, and the margin was between the apparent winner of the fourth seat, Anne Lazarus, and each of the three candidates who trailed her by less than 0.5 percent, according to Charlie Young, deputy press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of State.
The purpose of the recount, he said, is to verify that Lazarus did in fact win the fourth seat, or if one of the other candidates is the victor. Those candidates are Democrats Robert J. Colville and Kevin Francis McCarthy and Republican Temp Smith. Colville trails Lazarus by 2,258 votes, Smith by 3,534, and McCarthy by 12,682.
The candidates had the chance to opt out of the recount, thus saving taxpayer money for the recount. Smith was the only one of the three who did not ask to opt out. Therefore, Pedro A. Cortes, secretary of the commonwealth, announced Friday that a recount would be conducted.
To conduct the recount, the counties will be reimbursed $50 by the state for each voting machine or ballot box in each precinct.
Northumberland County will be reimbursed $9,100 for its 182 voting machines; Union County, $4,650 for its 93 machines; Montour County, $750 for its 15 ballot boxes; and Snyder County, $1,250 for its 25 ballot boxes.
The Snyder County commissioners on Tuesday unanimously opted to contract with Election Systems & Software to bring in a Model 650 Central Ballot Counter to do the recount in order to save man hours, which they said likely would involve overtime pay for 10 to 12 people for up to three days. There also is a potential for errors if the work is done by hand, they said.
The cost for the machine is an estimated $1 per ballot. A total 5,850 ballots were cast Nov. 3 in Snyder County.
According to Young, most counties in the state are doing the recount themselves. Fifty counties, which already use electronic voting machines, can conduct the recount more easily.
“Of the 11 counties who use the same system as Snyder, eight have an arrangement with ES&S;,” he said.
Montour, Northumberland and Union counties will pay out only for employee time spent to recount the votes in this particular race, but officials in each county said they did not expect the recount to take longer than a day.
“We’re trying to save money,” said Darlis Dyer, assistant director of elections for Montour County. The board of elections will work in teams to count the county’s 3,285 paper ballots by hand.
In Union County, more than 6,000 ballots will be counted by reviewing the results from the electronic voting machines, said Kim Zerbe, an employee in the voter registration office. Absentee paper ballot votes will be recounted by hand.
She is not anticipating the numbers to be much different, if at all, than the original count.
Six officials in Northumberland County will begin the recount today by reviewing the more than 14,000 votes cast on the electronic voting machines, according to Scott Dunn, director of elections.
“It should go fairly smooth,” he said.
The recount is expected to be completed in each county by the end of the week. The deadline for completion is noon Nov. 25. Results must be submitted to the Department of State no later than noon Nov. 30.
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$16,000 coming to Valley for recount
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