YORK COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) -- Provisional ballots in the Central York School District race broke heavily in favor of Democratic challengers, catapulting Democrat Rebecca Riek ahead of Faith Casale, a Republican, in updated election results released Friday afternoon.
The district drew global attention after a controversy over what Democrats considered a book ban.
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Following the initial tabulation of election day and mail-in votes, Casale had a slim lead for the fourth four-year seat. But 50 provisional ballots remained to be canvassed -- a process to determine their eligibility -- and then eligible ballots needed to be tabulated. Including the eligible provisional ballots, Riek took a 23-vote lead.
“I am eager for the opportunity to serve our community as a member of the school board. I will draw on my three decades of classroom experience to ensure our students receive a world-class education,” Riek told abc27 News Friday afternoon.
Casale didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Voters are required to use a provisional ballot, which is set aside for further research, when -- for example -- a voter who requested a mail-in ballot shows up to vote on election day and doesn't have the mail-in ballot with them. In that case, the election staff checks to see whether the mail-in ballot arrived at the election office. If so, the provisional ballot doesn't count (to prevent a voter from voting twice). If not, the provisional ballot counts.
The overall "adjudication" process was slowed by the need to manually count tens of thousands of write-in votes. In one race that depended on those results -- South Western school director, where voters wrote in more than 4,000 names in a race in which the top vote-getter on the ballot had less than 3,000 votes -- the result didn't change after all, because no single write-in vote-getter got enough votes to displace any of the candidates on the ballot.
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