TOWAMENCIN — The region’s tightest election race looks like it could be headed to overtime.
Towamencin supervisor Rich Marino and challenger Kofi Osei are now tied in their race for the seat currently held by Marino, after an update to county vote totals Monday.
“After counting mis-dated ballots, the election is now tied. There will be five days to challenge the results and if it remains tied, we get to draw lots,” Osei said Monday.
“Regardless of the outcome, I will be consulting with my team on how next to proceed. I feel, and I believe a lot of others feel strongly that election rules should not be changed in the middle of an election,” Marino said the night before.
Over the past two years, incumbent Republican Marino and Democrat challenger Osei have sparred at numerous township meetings over Towamencin’s long-running sewer sale debate, with proponents including Marino arguing both before and after the sale vote in May 2022 that selling the public sewer system to a private owner could pay down debt, lower taxes, and fund projects around the township, while opponents including Osei have argued the sale leaves residents vulnerable to steep sewer rate hikes from a private firm instead of under municipal control.
Sale opponents won a ballot box victory in November 2022 authorizing the establishment of a “government study commission” that Osei chaired, which wrote a new township charter with provisions they claim make the sale illegal, and that charter was approved by township voters this past May and took effect July 1.
On election night, early unofficial vote totals posted by Montgomery County had Osei ahead by a margin of 1,167 votes to 510 for Marino with only mail ballots counted at that point, and roughly an hour and a half later, the margins had flipped, with Marino leading the election day votes by 711 to Osei’s lead in mail votes of 657 ballots cast. Updated county vote totals posted early Wednesday, the morning after election day, showed Marino totaling 3,019 votes to 3,001 for Osei, and continued counting by the county had narrowed that lead to just five votes by the week after the election.
Sunday night, Marino posted a lengthy update on his campaign Facebook page addressing the latest vote totals, and a county certification meeting that was cancelled last week due to a federal court ruling regarding undated ballots.
“From the information I have, there are six ballots in the Towamencin Township Supervisors race that are affected by this decision. These ballots were not counted in the original vote count because by Pennsylvania Law, they were not dated and therefore invalid. By order of Judge Baxter of the US 3rd Circuit Court, these ballots now have to be counted,” and added to the count Monday, Marino said.
“Since the County was prepared to certify the election and only delayed certification because of this court decision, based on Pennsylvania Law at the time of the election – I won,” he said.
Throughout his time campaigning, Marino added, he heard from “numerous voters about concerns they had with mail-in balloting,” and told those voters that “it is here to stay and I believe they have a lot of bugs worked out of it. Apparently I was premature.”
“After reading the decision, my feeling is that the Judge places too great an emphasis on counting ballots and waiving procedure to avoid disenfranchising voters. No one wants to exclude anyone from voting – but for the public to have confidence in election outcomes, there needs to be established procedures that are followed uniformly. If anything goes – we will never get back to the confidence we had in elections prior to mail-in balloting,” Marino said.
He then used an example to prove the point, asking what would happen if a voter arrived after the polls close at 8 p.m. on election day.
“By the logic employed by this judge, a voter who shows up at the polls at 8:45 pm on Election Day should be allowed to vote. The poll workers are still there, ballots are available….. why not let them cast a ballot…? Why keep someone from voting over a silly little thing like the time of day (or date for that matter). Procedures matter,” he said.
“While I disagree with this ruling, if rules are to be changed they should apply to the next election — not one that is competed but not finalized,” Marino said.
Osei also addressed the latest count Monday, in posts on his campaign Facebook page, and in comments on the “Towamencin NOPE” group he founded to oppose the sewer sale.
“If it stays tied we get to draw numbers from a hat and whoever has the lowest number is supervisor,” Osei said, in response to comments on his initial post announcing the tied vote counts. “My perspective is that I should have won by a big margin if I didn’t want luck involved. Runoffs are expensive.”
In response to questions from other group members, Osei said Monday he was unsure of when the draw would take place, and said doing so would likely take place at the county’s board of elections. Group member Mike Miller suggested another tiebreaker: “Instead of drawing numbers, you should draw sewer bills. Whoever has the lower bills wins. You draw Towamencin township bills and Marino draws PA American Water bills. I bet Marino won’t like that idea,” an idea that drew laughing emojis as responses from several group members, including Osei.
On Tuesday, Montgomery County Interim Director of Elections Francis Dean announced that per state election code, the drawing would be done at noon on Thursday, Nov. 30, in the county commissioners’ boardroom in Norristown, and said each candidate could appear or designate a representative to appear for them.
“If the candidate or their representative is not present at the designated start time, the county board will select someone to draw on the candidate’s behalf,” Dean said.
