Tie vote in Pike election requires a casting of lots

One voter claims her vote was taken from her

By TOM KANE

MILFORD, PA - When Linda Boyle arrived at the polling station two in Dingman at 7:00 a.m., she was the first to vote in the Delaware Valley school board primary. Later that day, she met a friend who told her about a bad experience she had at the same voting place in Dingman Township.

“She told me that the polling inspector gave her the wrong card to carry into the voting booth and that the same thing happened to two other voters when someone noticed the mistake. It was soon corrected and the third voter used the right card. I then realized that I was given the wrong card and had voted for the opposite that I intended.” Boyle voted in the Democratic race rather than in the Republican one.

Boyle made her remarks to the Pike County Commissioners meeting on May 27 and urged that this kind of mistake not happen again. “My vote did not count and that’s very wrong,” she said.

The two candidates for the school board in the primary contest, Jack Fisher and Republican Ed Silverstone, will have to cast lots at the county office to determine who will run for the position on the school board for the Republican ticket. In the primary, each man recieved 638 votes.

Both men also ran in the Democratic primary, and Fisher won handily by a vote of 494 to 336.

“When I went to the Board of Elections to complain, they gave me a provisional ballot which I now know was not the right thing to do,” Boyle said. “I wanted a chance to exercise my vote as I intended.” Provisional ballots are used only at the polling station when a problem arises about whether the voter is in the right polling station or if the voter’s name is not in the registry at the station.

“The provisional ballot should not have been given to her,” said Pike County’s solicitor Tom Farrell. Boyle’s attempt to vote again and correct the error was ruled illegal.

Pike uses voting machines that require a voter to insert a special coded card in the side of the machine?a card for a Democrat voter and another card for a Republican voter.

“We don’t know what went wrong,” said Rich Caridi, chairman of the Pike County Commissioners. “It could have been a human error or a mechanical error. We’re seriously looking into it.”

“As soon as we heard about the error, we called the state Department of Elections, who told us the voter could not vote again and that the vote stands,” Caridi said.

So the tie vote in the election stands.

How will the lots be cast? “All the state code says in this situation is that the candidates must cast lots, but it doesn’t say what method must be used to cast the lots,” Caridi said. “That’s left up to us.”

The casting of lots by the candidates will take place in the county administration building on June 5 at 12:00 noon.