No candidates will appear on the May 16 primary election ballot in the race for five Hanover Area School Board seats because a slate of interested candidates did not submit all required paperwork before the filing deadline, according to Luzerne County’s election bureau.
That means voters in the school district will be selecting Republican and Democratic nominees — five in each party — through write-in votes.
Here’s what happened, according to Election Director Eryn Harvey and Election Operations Directory Emily Cook:
A man representing a team of five school board candidates brought their nomination petitions and other paperwork to the county election bureau on March 6, the day before the filing deadline.
The man was informed each packet was missing a bureau candidate information sheet, which is a form that includes the printed name exactly as the candidate wants it to appear on the ballot, along with candidate contact information.
The bureau provided five forms to the man and gave him the option to fill them out on the spot and file the paperwork that day or return the next day, which was the filing deadline.
Instead, the paperwork was brought in on March 8, the day after the deadline, which means the election bureau could not accept it.
Brian C. McDermott, one of the five candidates running as a team, said Thursday that the slate will be launching an aggressive write-in campaign hoping to secure both party nominations to appear on the ballot in the November general election.
McDermott said the filing problem was an unfortunate “miscommunication.”
“At the end of the day, it is the responsibility of candidates to file on time. We take responsibility,” he said.
McDermott identified the four other candidates that will be running a joint write-in campaign with him: Paul Holmgren, Jacob S. Hyder, Michael D. Mazur and Matthew Redick. Holmgren, Mazur and Redick are incumbents.
Before advertising the write-in campaign, McDermott said he was awaiting confirmation from the county on which voting method will be used in the upcoming primary to ensure the correct write-in instructions are communicated to voters.
Earlier this month, a county Election Board majority voted to support the election bureau’s plan to use paper ballots instead of electronic ballot marking devices at polling places in the primary.
County Administrative Services Division Head Jennifer Pecora said Thursday the county is proceeding with the paper ballot plan.
With the electronic ballot marking devices, voters pick their candidates on a computer screen — including typing in the names of any write-ins — and then print out the resulting ballot, which they must review and feed into the tabulator/scanner.
Under the paper plan, voters will mark their candidate choices and hand-write any write-in selections and then feed their paper ballot into the tabulator/scanner for the vote to be cast.
Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams had provided the lone vote of opposition to the paper plan, in part because the ballot marking devices do not require deciphering of handwritten write-in names.
Harvey had presented the plan to use paper ballots, telling the election board they were successfully used during a Jan. 31 state senate special election impacting 18 municipalities.
While each of the 186 precincts must still have a ballot marking device available for those with disabilities in the primary, Harvey had said the plan would reduce the county’s expense for Dominion Voting Systems Inc. to bring a team of 10 or so representatives here for two weeks to program and test all of the approximately 700 ballot marking devices.
Although the paper ballots would be an additional expense, there also would be savings on transporting the ballot marking devices to polling places, she said.
Essentially, the plan would free up the bureau to concentrate on other pressing matters before the election and increase the bureau’s workload after the election, when results must be reconciled before certification, Harvey had said.