Schuylkill County will have to wait at least another two weeks to learn the final results of the race for district attorney, as a judge on Tuesday threw out a petition asking for a vote recount, which had been slated for 9 a.m. today.
President Judge William E. Baldwin dismissed one petition filed on Nov. 18 by supporters of incumbent Democrat Karen Byrnes-Noon, ruling he had no jurisdiction to consider it because it did not comply with state law.
"You can't get past the defective petition," Maria T. Casey, Minersville, who represented Republican candidate Christine A. Holman, said after the hearing.
However, a second petition, which was filed Thursday and also challenges the results of the district attorney race, remains before Baldwin, who has scheduled a hearing on it for 9 a.m. Dec. 10.
That hearing will determine whether there will be a recount of at least some of the votes cast in one of most tightly contested countywide races in many years.
The count after the Nov. 5 voting showed Holman, Barnesville, defeating Byrnes-Noon, Ashland, 15,258 to 15,191.
Holman, a former assistant district attorney who also maintains a private legal practice in Frackville, and Byrnes-Noon, who had served as district attorney since being appointed in January 2012 to replace James P. Goodman after he had been elected as a county judge, had waged a contentious campaign.
Casey said only three electors, or voters, filed the Nov. 18 petition, when the state Election Code requires three from each voting district. Casey said 375, three from each of the county's 125 districts, would have been necessary for a valid petition.
"If you don't have that, the court is without jurisdiction to hear the challenge," Casey said.
As a result, the totals from election night still stand, although Lawrence M. Otter, Doylestown, the lawyer for Byrnes-Noon's supporters, said he was not terribly disappointed by Tuesday's result because the matter is not over.
"We have a fallback petition," he said. "I'm reasonably sure we'll prevail on that. There will be a recount."
That petition, filed Thursday by 21 voters, also refers to the Election Code in asking for a recount of all of the paper ballots, about 1,600, used for absentee and overseas voters, alleging that the count of those ballots was incorrect.
"There appeared to be a computer glitch during the counting of the absentee ballots ... in that the optical scanner would not read some of the absentee ballots," according to that petition.
Casey said she and Holman know the fight is not yet over.
"The election contest is out there, so we'll deal with that," she said.