Voting in a special election to fill a vacant state House of Representatives seat ended Tuesday night with no clear winner: The only candidate on the ballot tallied less than 8 percent of the votes, with the rest going to write-in candidates. With all precincts counted in North Philadelphia’s largely Democratic 197th District, Republican Lucinda Little had 198 votes, the rest — 2,483 — going to a number of write-in candidates, including Democrat Emilio Vazquez and the Green Party’s Cheri Honkala. Deputy City Commissioner Tim Dowling said a winner won’t be declared until at least Friday.
“The official count begins on Friday at 9 a.m.,” Dowling said. “We will reread all the cartridges to get the machine count for the candidate that was on the ballot. … We will proceed to go through all the write-in tapes and do a count of the write-ins for each division that were cast for the different individuals. Everything starts at 9 a.m. on Friday.”
In a telephone interview late Tuesday night, Honkala said she liked her chances. “I think I did fantastic,” Honkala said. “Every polling booth that I went out to we had the biggest team and everyone worked really hard and did amazing stuff.
“We are collecting our own tally and poll workers are reporting on their experience. We will be having a press conference at 4 p.m. [Wednesday] over our concerns with corruption in the 197th race.”
Full Article: Voters in 197th District special election go with write-in candidates.