Legal News

Superior Court Recount Results Due This Week

By Brian Harris

By Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff

All 67 of Pennsylvania's election boards had until noon today to submit the results of the first statewide recount spurred as a matter of law in a close state Superior Court race. However, the results must be reviewed by the Department of State before they become official, said Leslie Amorós, a departmental spokeswoman.

The results should be released in the next day or two, she said.

A recount was re-triggered after three candidates finished within one half of one percentage point of Anne E. Lazarus, a Philadelphia trial judge who will be the only Democrat to win statewide if she succeeds in the outcome.

The two Democratic candidates who finished first place and third place behind Lazarus both chose to opt out of the recount, but the one Republican candidate who finished second place behind Lazarus did not choose to opt out. Temp Smith, an Allegheny County lawyer, is the Republican candidate. And Robert Colville, an Allegheny trial judge, and Kevin Francis McCarthy, an attorney with the Allegheny District Attorney's Office, are the two Democrats who respectively finished second and fourth behind Lazarus.

At the time the recount was triggered, Smith trailed by 3,534 votes, Colville trailed by 2,258 votes and McCarthy was behind by 12,682 votes.

Full post as published by The Legal Intelligencer Blog on November 30, 2009 (boomark / email).