Candidates Running For Perkiomen Valley School Board Keep An Eye On Election Count

PERKIOMEN VALLEY, PA — Republicans in the running for Perkiomen Valley School Board may have declared a premature victory given that election results continue to pour in from outstanding mail-in ballots all across Montgomery County.

The GOP slate, which calls itself ‘Flip 4 PV,’ had believed it won unanimous election to the school board, even telling Patch that the current board reached out to the candidates to begin the onboarding process following Tuesday’s election.

However, it soon became clear that the figures offered on county election return documents were far from conclusive, given that mail-in ballots continue to be counted.

Because there were no incumbents in the race, the Perkiomen Valley School Board contest was particularly competitive. And candidates on both sides were passionate about issues they feel the school district should be paying attention to.

Now, as it becomes clear that a unanimous Republican win may not necessarily be the case, frustration seems to be mounting.

“They obviously did not track mail-in ballots correctly,” Republican candidate Jason Saylor told Patch in an interview Thursday. “That’s the first point of the ineptitude of the county.”

Saylor stressed to Patch that his frustration has nothing to do with any type of conspiracy theory or other far-flung motives; Republicans often get accused of this, and that is not the case here.

“I’m not claiming anything is scandalous, let’s just say that,” said Saylor, who was in charge of running the Flip 4 PV campaign.

But he did say he believes there was a “massive ineptitude” on the part of county elections officials.

Saylor, who says he has gotten minimal sleep since Tuesday night, has been constantly monitoring the situation with the election results. He has been on the phones with lawyers and keeping an eye on the numbers as they pour in.

Saylor pointed to the ballot printing mishap from last month as the beginning of problems in Montgomery County. At the time, county election officials said that around 16,000 incorrectly printed mail-in ballots had been sent to voters due to a programming error made by the ballot vendor; the faulty ballots were printed on one side as opposed to two sides.

Patch previously reported on this problem.

Saylor said election officials at first said they’d disregard those ballots and later said they would count them. That was issue number one, he said.

Patch reached out to the county’s office of voter services to try and find out more about this matter and was connected to Kelly Cofrancisco, the director of communications for Montgomery County.

Cofrancisco said that the county would indeed count any of those single-sided mail-in ballots if, and only if, that was the only ballot that was turned in by a voter, because the county does not want to disenfranchise any voter.

“We have to just make sure and verify that they didn’t vote in some other way," she said. "We don’t want to be double counting.”

Saylor also said the county seems to be counting mail-in ballots that were missing secrecy envelopes, another problem with the process. Secrecy envelopes are supposed to be a security measure that helps shield the contents of a ballot from outside view.

Cofrancisco, however, said it is illegal for the county to count ballots that were missing secrecy envelopes, pointing to a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on the matter.

Saylor insisted he’s not claiming any part of the process is fraudulent, but simply mismanaged and unfair to candidates in all the races.

“There are rules and consequences to everything,” he said.

Based on his own data collection, Saylor believes that he would win his seat, as would fellow Republicans Don Fountain and Rowan Keenan. But he questions whether Republican Jason Geddes will secure enough votes to join the team.

He said it is possible that Democrat Tammy Campli, who ran alongside three other Democratic candidates on the PV PerseVere slate, could possibly gain enough votes to edge out Geddes, but again, this is all conjecture at this point, he admitted.

Patch reached out to Campli to get her take on the matter.

“If we have learned nothing else, we have learned that it is very important to wait for the results to be listed as official,” Campli stated in written comments to Patch. “While I am hopeful and confident with the ever changing numbers, I will patiently wait for all results to be finalized. Hopefully we learn soon and we can move forward to do the good work of supporting our students.”

The other Democrats in the race are Michelle Smith, Michelle Keating-Sibel and Edward McGuire.

Saylor meanwhile also took issue with the county posting unofficial results based solely on in-person precincts reporting. And the fact that the county states on its report that the tally is based on 100 percent of precincts reporting can be misleading.

“This should not be happening,” he said. “Results shouldn’t be posted then. Don’t post anything until it’s done. It’s an emotional roller coaster.”

Saylor said he feels bad for all eight candidates in the race due to this matter, not simply the Republicans.

“This is extremely unfair to all eight candidates,” he said. “They [the county] bungled it and now people unfortunately think there’s some shady business happening.”

Patch is continuing to monitor the Perkiomen Valley School Board race and other races as numbers continue to change, and we will bring you periodic updates on election figures as the count continues.