Irregularities in totals caused by Northampton County’s new electronic voting machines delayed the release of unofficial tallies from Tuesday’s election, as officials were forced to count paper ballots late into the evening.
By early Wednesday morning, however, the unofficial results from all of the local and county-wide races were known.
In the race for three seats on Hellertown Borough Council, incumbents Philip Weber, Earl Hill and Michael McKenna bested fellow incumbent Andrew Hughes, with Weber being the top vote-getter with 816 votes, according to the unofficial results.
Vote totals for the Hellertown Borough Council candidates can be found on page 19 of the county’s election results summary report. Results won’t be official until they are certified by the county later this month.
Hughes, a Republican and former zoning hearing board member, was running for a four-year term in order to remain on council following his appointment one year ago to fill a council seat vacated by Kevin Lott. Lott resigned from borough council when he was appointed to fill an open seat on Northampton County Council. He ran unopposed in the election and won a full four-year term as the county councilman for District 1, according to the unofficial results.
Weber and Hill both ran as Democrat/Republican, and McKenna ran as a Democrat.
Joining them on borough council will be newcomer Matt Marcincin, who was elected to a two-year term in a special election to fill a seat that McKenna was appointed to in mid-2018, following the resignation of former councilman Herb Payung.
Marcincin ran unopposed in his race.
In the race for three seats on Lower Saucon Township Council, the top three vote-getters in a field that included six candidates were Republican newcomer Jason Banonis, Republican incumbent Sandra Yerger and Democratic incumbent Priscilla deLeon, according to the county’s unofficial results.
According to the county’s unofficial vote totals, incumbent Donna Louder (R) finished fourth in the race, incumbent George Gress (D) finished fifth and newcomer Kristen Stauffer (D) finished sixth. Click here to view the vote totals, which can be found on page 22 of the county’s summary report.
There is a twist to the Lower Saucon Township Council election, since Banonis also ran in a two-way race for a two-year seat on council, and won that race handily, with 1,254 votes to Democratic opponent Atom Kallen’s 926, according to unofficial results.
Since Banonis has won two seats on council, he will select one to fill, and council will appoint someone to fill the other seat in January.
In a race that had no ballot candidates–the race for Lower Saucon Township controller–there were 21 write-in votes, according to the county’s election summary report. The names of those write-ins are not recorded on the report, which indicated that overall throughout the county voter turnout was 27.68 percent, with 57,680 registered voters casting votes out of a possible 208,417.
For additional information about county-wide and other races in Northampton County, please see the unofficial tallies listed on the summary report. Unofficial results recorded at the precinct level can be found here.
