MEDIA, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — Nearly a month after the last election, officials in Delaware County have finally completed recounts in four close municipal contests.
Delaware County Elections Director James Allen says, in local contests you have a higher chance of having results where the winner and loser are separated by a small number of votes.
“In this instance, we had four contests where they were decided by 30 or as few as 10 votes. The people on the losing side petitioned, naturally, to see and verify there wasn’t a possibility of some kind of error or mistake.”
Allen says in those four small contests the results stayed the same but there was a wrench in the recount process: A federal court issued an order that undated or improperly dated mail and absentee envelopes be opened and that those ballots be added.
“It only resulted in a small number of ballots being added to each one. None of those changed or affected the outcome, but nonetheless it was an interesting wrinkle,” Allen said.
The recounts confirm that Chuck Dennie won a six-year term as Bethel Township supervisor by 29 votes.
Stephanie DerOhannessian won a two-year term as Bethel Township supervisor by 29 votes.
Annie Thorne won a six-year term as Edgmont Township supervisor by 28 votes.
Kimberly Duffy, Bill Helms, Julie Pfaff and Andy Sharpe won the “vote-for-four” four-year terms to Glenolden Borough Council.
“We did the standard machine recount. We also threw in a hand recount, and the people who said they previously favored hand counts came away from that exercise saying that now they realize the huge potential for human error in those hand hand recounts and they said they used to be proponents of it, now they’re not.”