Coleman holds 30-vote lead over Browne in 16th Senate race
But final count won't be known until next week as Bucks and Lehigh continue to count ballots
Jarrett Coleman, an airline pilot and Parkland School Board member, continues to hold a 30-vote lead over incumbent Pat Browne in the Republican primary for Pennsylvania's 16th Senate District.
At this point, Coleman, 32, has 17,002 votes and Browne, 58, has 16,972.
Lehigh County and Bucks County are still counting ballots and said it will be days before all the votes are counted.
Coleman told Armchair Lehigh Valley that he thinks he will emerge the winner.
“As of now all legal mail in ballots, and absentee ballots have been counted and reported as well as precinct numbers for the 16th Senate District,” he said. “There are not any remaining legal mail in ballots left to be counted.”
“Since the remaining legal ballots only include provisional ballots, we are confident that the number and resulting impact to the race would be unlikely to change the result,” he said.
Browne could not be reached for comment.
Lehigh County Chief Election Clerk Tim Benyo said the county will begin counting 393 provisional ballots on Friday.
Provisional ballots are cast when a voter’s eligibility to vote may be in question and must be reviewed before accepted.
Bucks County has 640 provisional ballots to count, said James O’Malley, county deputy director of communications. It will begin to count them on Tuesday.
Both counties also must count overseas ballots, which must be received no later than 5 p.m. Tuesday. Bucks has received 153 overseas ballots. In addition, there are 714 ballots that have been segregated for review over issues such as a lack of a date or missing signature on a mail-in ballot.
“Our count here essentially won’t be done until early next week” O’Malley said.
Meanwhile, another issue is underscoring how easily a close race could go either way when every vote matters.
Lehigh County is not counting mail-in ballots that do not have a hand-written date on the official return envelope.
The county is currently involved in a civil rights lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of five Lehigh County voters who saw their mail-in ballots rejected in November because they didn’t write the date on the outside of the return envelope.
The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on the matter today.
Benyo said that the ACLU case has extended the time frame in getting an answer on whether the ballots can be counted or discarded.
He said the county is not tallying the ballots because doing so now would make it difficult to remove the votes should the voters lose their case.
“I told both campaigns, at this point undated mail ballots are not included in the count,” Benyo said.