Knapp seeks recount in Luzerne County Council race

Ronald Knapp is officially seeking a recount and reconciliation of all Republican votes cast throughout Luzerne County in the May 18 primary to determine if he is really 57 votes shy of securing the party’s nomination in the county council race.

In a petition filed Wednesday in county court, the Nanticoke resident pointed to an error that caused the Republican ballot heading to be mislabeled as the Democratic one on electronic machines at polling places. Knapp said the problem caused more party voters to use paper provisional or emergency ballots that may have been incorrectly tabulated by the county election board.

He also alleged an unspecified number of electronic poll books used at polling place sign-ins were inoperable, resulting in an inaccurate count of party voters for verification purposes.

In the May 18 primary, Republican and Democratic voters each selected five nominees to advance to the November general election, when voters will be free to select five of any affiliation.

The unofficial tallies of the top five Republican council contenders: John Lombardo, 11,747; Gregory S. Wolovich Jr., 10,508; Chris Perry, 10,379; Brian Thornton, 8,810; and Kevin Lescavage, 8,603.

Knapp received 8,546 votes.

County Chief Solicitor Romilda Crocamo said Assistant Solicitor Michael Butera is preparing a response to Knapp’s petition that is expected to be filed Thursday.

The county will seek an expedited court hearing on the matter, she said.

Multiple employees and the county Election Board would have to spend more than a week hand-counting all Republican ballots countywide if Knapp’s request is granted, Crocamo said.

The volunteer, five-citizen election board has scheduled a meeting at 6 p.m. Monday to vote on certifying primary election results in county and municipal races. Wednesday was the deadline for challenges.

No recount in Swoyersville

Three votes shy of securing a Democratic nomination in Swoyersville borough’s mayoral race, Kelley Conner said she decided not to seek a recount even though she now has no sense of confidence in the results.

Conner said she received reports of voters from both parties in the borough and elsewhere receiving the incorrect ballot due to the mislabeling error. At least two county Democrats had informed the newspaper the mislabeled Republican ballot was loaded onto their screen at their polling place, although they detected the error in time and alerted poll workers to switch to the correct Democratic one.

In such a tight race, Conner wonders if more than three Democratic voters ended up with a Republican ballot. She said she was informed some voters were instructed to write in her name because it was not listed on their ballot, which leads her to believe they had the wrong ballot. Write-in votes on the Republican ballot remain with that party nomination and cannot be transferred and added to a candidate’s Democratic vote tally.

Kathleen Breznay secured the Democratic nomination in the mayoral race with 237 votes, compared to Conner’s 234, according to unofficial results.

There were 20 Democratic write-in votes lumped into a “scattered” category instead of being itemized by individual names.

However, these Democratic write-in votes cannot help Conner or others already on the ballot, said county Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams. State law prohibits candidates from receiving credit for write-in votes on their party’s ballot when their names appear on the ballot as official candidates, she said.

Russell Jones received the Republican nomination in the borough’s mayoral race, with 262 votes. There were 113 scattered write-in votes on the Republican side, but Williams said that would not be enough to surpass Jones’ tally, even if all the write-ins were for the same person.

Conner also told county council in a letter that some early voters at the borough’s Ward 2 polling place were asked to return later to cast their ballots because the polling place opened about an hour late. One man turned away had to travel outside the area to work a double shift, she said.

A paralegal for nearly 25 years, Conner said the county should itemize every scattered write-in vote, which would allow her to assess if anyone attempted to vote for her that way on both party ballots. She said she should not be forced to undergo the burden of seeking a court challenge and said her decision to speak out is not “sour grapes.”

“Right now this is beyond winning and losing. I’ll take the loss. It’s transparency people are looking for now,” she said.

The election board initially started listing every single write-in name after the primary but changed course out of a concern it would not be able to complete the process in a timely manner. Due to the high number of write-ins — approximately 13,000 — county workers were called in to assist the election board in its processing. Scattering was reserved for instances when the total number of write-ins was not high enough to secure a nomination in each race, officials said.