12 Votes Separate Stephens And Cerrato For PA 151st House District Race: Latest

HORSHAM, PA — Incumbent Republican State Rep. Todd Stephens has a 12-vote lead over the Democratic challenger seeking to unseat him, the latest numbers from Montgomery County show.

The race for Pennsylvania's 151st Legislative District got even tighter as county officials begin to evaluate and count mail-in and absentee ballots. Stephens, who is seeking his seventh term, has 16,642 votes to opponent Melissa Cerrato's 16,630 according to the latest results.

The Montgomery County Board of Elections website was last updated Friday at 12:52 p.m. There are 2,334 absentee and mail-in ballots left to be counted, the website shows.

The Board of Elections (made up of the three county commissioners) voted to accept an additional 1,275 segregated ballots in a meeting Thursday.

Officials said voters deposited ballots improperly at six deposit boxes around the county (for example, a man deposited his spouse's ballot along with his own, without proper paperwork). About six to nine ballots were improperly delivered, so all ballots in these boxes were segregated, officials said.

The District Attorney's office will further investigate instances at these six boxes, officials said.

The county has completed counted mail-in ballots, except for those pending evaluation. Officials have not started counting military ballots, the BOE website shows; the deadline for military ballots to be returned is Nov. 15. The county shows 329 military ballots returned so far.

The county BOE does not have a count of provisional ballots returned as of 3 p.m. Friday.

The race is closely watched, as Stephens is one of only three Republicans left representing Montgomery County in the state House.

Montgomery County was a once red suburban Philadelphia collar county that is now blue after a surge in Democratic Party registrations due to changing demographics and migration from folks coming from solidly blue Philadelphia.

"This is truly a race where we will have to wait until every last ballot is counted to know," Cerrato told Patch in brief remarks around 6:30 Wednesday morning.

Partisan control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives hinges on the results of this race and a similarly close contest in Bucks County. As Patch reported, Democrat Mark Moffa and Republican Joe Hogan are neck-and-neck to represent the district most recently held by Republican Rep. Frank Farry. Only two votes separated the candidates as of Thursday afternoon.

Patch's Jon Campisi contributed to this report.