May 20, 2015 4 min read

Robert Redlinger cruised to an easy victory Tuesday on both the Democratic and Republican ballots in his bid for re-election to the magisterial district judge seat covering Washington and North Franklin Township – once ballots were finally counted after midnight.

On the Democratic side, Redlinger defeated challenger Anthony Gennaccaro by a margin of 1,115 to 364. On the Republican ballot, Redlinger had 413 votes to Gennaccaro’s 168.

The results were not available Tuesday night because of a mishap that occurred within the county’s Dominion voting system.

East Washington resident Nancy Weiss, a longtime member of the League of Women Voters who is familiar with many facets of the election, saw the magisterial race on the ballot in her community but knew District Judge Jay Weller was assigned the borough when districts were realigned two years ago. East Washington used to be part of the Washington magisterial district.

Weiss called the Washington County elections office after she voted, but the voting machines could not be changed, and there was no way to subtract magisterial votes from East Washington while the elections office was downloading information from voting machines’ memory cards and passing it along to the county’s information technology department, which publishes it on the county’s websites.

“We knew we couldn’t fix the problem with the magistrates’ race until the end of the night,” said Don Cortese, Washington County chief information officer who oversees the information technology department. “We post the results, the results that they give us,” he said of the elections office.

A final countywide cumulative total didn’t appear until about 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, after elections office workers, wielding flashlights, tracked down memory cards that had been inadvertently left inside voting machines from 16 precincts. Local election boards are supposed to remove the cards from machines at the polls, place them in security bags and turn them for processing inside the elections office. About 560 memory cards were used in Tuesday’s election, one for each voting machine deployed.

Once the cumulative total was produced, the elections office could change its software and tabulate the magisterial race, the results of which the IT department published on the county website at 12:15 a.m. Wednesday.

Elections Director Larry Spahr said Wednesday he went through the process of deleting the magistrates’ race from East Washington Borough’s candidates’ list computer software several weeks ago, but he was unaware the change he made didn’t “take.”

“It’s proofread upon proofread upon proofread,” Spahr said.

The county commissioners, who are not members of the election board because they are running this year, are expecting a report Friday from Spahr. The number of candidates on both the Democratic and Republican ballots in a municipal primary is the longest list in any election. Ballots in presidential and gubernatorial election years are much shorter.

Redlinger, who was seeking a second, six-year term, noticed his name missing from the county online database shortly after 8 p.m. Concerned, he said he tried to get some type of explanation with no luck.

“We had no idea of what was going on,” Redlinger said. “My wife, some of my closet friends and I went to the six biggest polls and counted the votes. Once we added them all up, we knew we won.”

Redlinger thanked friends, his family and voters for their support and effort.

“You have placed your faith in me and I take that very seriously,” he said. “I will continue to serve this community with the respect it deserves.”

Gennaccaro, who also ran for and secured the North Franklin constable seat, called the district judge race a “popularity contest.”

“(Redlinger) ran the campaign like a pep rally,” Gennaccaro said Wednesday.

While Gennaccaro said he didn’t want to appear bitter, he mentioned several issues with Redlinger that he “decided not to bring up during his campaign.”

“There were a lot of things that I didn’t bring up because I didn’t think it was proper,” Gennaccaro said. “The reason I ran was because of the way he runs his office.”

Gennaccaro said he hopes Redlinger will use him in his constable capacities in the future. However, Redlinger said things won’t change.

“There were reasons for him not being there from the beginning.”