Comitta urges patience as she holds lead in 19th

Democratic state Senate candidate Carolyn Comitta had some advice for fellow office seekers and concerned voters who might be pulling their hair out over the unresolved results from Tuesday’s state and national elections.

“It isn’t over ‘ til the count is over,” said said in an interview Wednesday, while waiting for the results of her own race with Republican challenger Kevin Runey foe the 19th state Senate District in Chester County.

Preliminary and unofficial reported by county election officials totals showed Comitta leading Runey by 67,365 votes to 57,828 votes.

It is difficult to know what percentage of the total number of ballots cast in the 19th Senate District those results represent, since the number of votes will include not only in- person precinct votes, but mailin ballots and other forms of voting that are not yet tabulated by precinct.

“I am being very patient,” said Comitta of her attitude towards the uncertainty of the fi nal results. “As we all should be. The vote by mail ballots are still be being counted.”

Comitta, for those who do not know, won one of the closest races in county history when she bested her GOP opponent, then- incumbent state Rep. Dan Truitt, R- 156th, of East Goshen, by 25 votes in 2016, after closing totals on Election Day that year showed her losing by 78 votes.

The race was not declared decided until midDecember.

“It’s deja vu all over again,” she exclaimed Wednesday. “I was down, then I was up. We had to let all the votes be counted before we knew who won.”

Then, as now, there are provisional ballots to count, overseas absentee ballots to tally, and military overseas ballots to be returned. All must be aggregated into the total.

“This is normal,” Comitta said of the delay in determining a winner and a loser in the state and national elections in Pennsylvania. “It is nothing new. There have always been delays. The big diff erence this years in the number of vote by mail ballots.”

The county had sent out 172,541 mail- in ballots to registered voters, and as of Monday had received 138,711 back, a number that would grow to 149,755 by 3 p. m. Wednesday. The county had prepared to begin counting the mailin ballots as polls opened on Election Day, and complete

the count by sunrise Wednesday.

Those plans hit a snag, however, when on Monday the Department of State in Harrisburg handed out a set of guidelines it said counties would be required to follow to test the veracity of each mail- in ballot envelope.

If those workers assembled in the antiquated Ehinger Gymnasium at West Chester University for the count came across “naked,” unsigned envelopes, or ballots that lacked a secrecy envelope, they were directed to alert observers for the two political parties. The parties could then contact voters, tell them there was a problem, and urge them to “cure,” of fi x the ballot. Otherwise it would not be counted.

That step, according to county Communications Coordinator Rebecca Brain, meant that a process that was supposed to begin at 7 a. m. did not start until three hours later. The process was further delayed as workers that had been assigned to fl atten the individual ballots after they had be removed from their envelopes were up to the task of inspecting the tens of thousands of ballot envelopes for signs of outward error.

“Things were moving very quickly at Voters Services,” but were ultimately delayed to the point where the county missed its selfimposed goal of a sunrise full count, said commissioners Vice Chairman Josh Maxwell. “We were just following the Department of State’s guidance.”

As of 4: 30 p. m., the county had counted only 71 percent of all of the ballots received as of Tuesday. Brain said initially that officials hoped to have the count done by the close

of business Wednesday, but later revised that. Additional ballots would be counted as they come in the mail with a valid postmark. The last day for receiving such ballots is Friday.

As Pennsylvania’s 67 counties began the painstaking process of processing and counting more than 2.5 million mail ballots, whether or not voters were given a chance to fi x errors and ensure their votes were counted depended largely on where they lived.

That inconsistency is now at the heart of an eleventhhour lawsuit filed Tuesday by a group of Republican candidates and voters seeking for counties to set aside any ballots that voters were allowed

In the lawsuit, filed in state Commonwealth Court, Republicans claim the state’s top election official, Kathy Boockvar, gave counties faulty guidance when she told them they could share information with political parties about voters whose ballots had problems. That information allowed the parties to track down voters and urge them to take action to ensure their vote is counted.

Boockvar’s guidance, they contend, “is in clear contravention” of both state law and a recent decision by Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court.

Boockvar, asked about the lawsuit late Tuesday evening, said, “We don’t think we broke the law.”

Though she said she did not want to comment on active litigation, she added, “I can tell you that the claims, we completely dispute.”

It was unclear Tuesday exactly how many ballots might be in question.

Because far more Democrats voted by mail in the state compared to Republicans, any eff ort to fi x mail ballots would probably benefi t Vice President Joe Biden more than President Donald Trump.

Democrat Comit ta, 68, of West Chester has served as state representative for the West Chester area since 2017, after having served two terms as mayor of West Chester and a member of the borough council. She worked as a teacher of special education and gifted students in the Octorara Area School District for 12 years, and for a planning consulting business she ran with her husband, Thomas Comitta.

Her Republican opponent Runey, 43, is operations director for Speciality Care, a national health care services fi rm. A pro- life conservative, he was elected in 2019 to the township supervisors board of London Grove, where he resides with his wife and three sons.

The 19th District is the largest of the four state Senate districts in Chester County, its boundaries holding 40 of the county’s 73 municipalities, and extending from the rural areas of the southern end of the county to urban areas including Coatesville, West Chester and Phoenixville, as well as suburban strongholds like Tredyffrin and West Whiteland.

It is a solidly Democratic district in terms of voter registration, with the party holding a 44 percent to 37 percent edge over its GOP counterpart.

Brain also addressed a delay in the county’s reporting system that left residents wanting to check the status of a particular race in the county, from President of the United States on down, without any information.

She said the county’s third- party vendor, B- Pro, which set up ts interactive portal for election results, had a software issue Tuesday night that kept results from being displayed. It eventually solved the matter around 11: 30 p. m., but the delay for the county to lost incomplete results on a PDF on its website.

Comitta Runey