“It’s been crazy. We’re finally getting caught up,” said Adams County Board of Elections Director Angie Crouse after a week of counting, recounting, and verifying ballots from last Tuesday’s primary elections. “There were a lot of write-ins,” she said.
Crouse said the office had now completed the election canvass and made the final tallies of the write-in votes.
The large number of write-ins has changed the outcome for three school districts.
For the Fairfield Area School District Board of Directors race, write-in candidates Eric Bollinger, James Fisher, and Melissa Kearchner displaced three incumbent candidates for slots in the November election. Incumbent board members Kelly Christiano, Lauren Kaye Clark, and Lashay M. Kalathas, whose names had appeared on the regular ballot, will not appear on the fall ballot.
At Bermudian School District, Region 1, where two candidates from each party were selected, write-in candidate Chad Mowery overtook Melissa Ann Pero. Pero will remain on the ballot as a Democrat.
Al Littlestown Area School District, Republican write-in candidate Benjamin Paul received enough votes to be added to the fall ballot.
Crouse said each write-in vote had been carefully checked by the two Republican and one Democratic members of the election board, which made the final decisions about the acceptability of the write-in votes. “They focus on a voter’s intent,” said Crouse, indicating that a write-in vote was often counted even if the name was spelled incorrectly.
Residents have five days to challenge the election board’s decisions.
Crouse said the write-in candidates were only checked if they had received more than the needed number of votes for that candidate to have been included in the regular ballot.
The elections office also completed the final tally of votes through the standard canvassing procedure, which was held last Friday. The canvass made sure that all mail-in and provisional ballots were counted and made a determination about whether to accept or reject each cast ballot based upon a voter’s eligibility.
The following is the complete list of write-in candidates as provided by the elections office:
Charles (Chuck) Stangor is Gettysburg Connection's Owner, Publisher, and Editor in Chief. I would like to hear from you. Please contact me at cstangor@gettysburgconnection.org.
