Nov 9, 2017 4 min read

In the end, the dispute over the absentee ballots in the Monessen mayor’s race didn’t matter, and neither did the controversy over the way in which only one candidate ended up on the Democratic and Republican primary ballots for the Peters Township-based district judge position.

In Monessen, political newcomer Matt Shorraw defeated incumbent Mayor Lou Mavrakis by 59 votes in the spring Democratic primary. There were no Republican candidates, so Shorraw appeared to be well on his way to securing the office.

However, we recently learned that Mavrakis wasn’t going to go down without a major fight and was mounting a campaign to get people to vote for him through absentee ballots. Shortly before Tuesday’s election, the Westmoreland County Election Bureau said it had received hundreds of absentee ballots, dwarfing the 38 absentee votes cast in the 2013 mayoral race.

Turns out, a lot of the folks filling out requests for absentee ballots gave as a reason that they are 65 or older. One problem: State election law does not allow a person to vote absentee just because they’re over a certain age. Mavrakis said the elections office told him it was fine for people 65 and older to ask for and receive absentee ballots. The mistake, he said, was “not my problem.”

Mavrakis said his supporters wanted the absentee ballots because their voting precinct for the primary had been moved without notice from the local high school to the middle school. That claim really doesn’t hold much water. The high school and middle school are in the same building.

Then, on Tuesday, Election Day, a Westmoreland County judge threw a new wrinkle into the mayoral race by impounding about 300 absentee ballots to determine their legality. It seemed as if the race might end up being a long, drawn-out affair, but it didn’t turn out that way.

Shorraw attracted 947 votes Tuesday, more than the combined number of impounded absentee ballots and the 467 write-in votes cast in the race. Even if all those absentees and write-ins go to Mavrakis, it doesn’t appear it will matter.

In Peters, Nottingham and Union townships and Finleyville, the big race was for the open district judge seat long held by James Ellis.

Controversy arose there when Ellis, who had circulated nominating petitions for a sixth term, abruptly announced in March, on the day when candidates had to file their petitions, that he wouldn’t be running again. That left Jacob Machel – after another candidate who had submitted petitions dropped out – as the only candidate on the Democratic and Republican ballots, and it left others who might have been interested in seeking the seat angry. To some, it seemed as if Machel had inside knowledge that Ellis was going to make a last-minute retirement announcement, something Machel has vehemently denied.

Write-in candidacies were mounted against Machel in the spring, but he prevailed to secure both major-party nominations. Just when it seemed that he could start picking out judicial robes, up stepped attorney Jesse Pettit, who announced he would be filing as an independent candidate for the November election.

There was considerable controversy late in the race when Machel refused to participate in a proposed League of Women Voters candidate forum with Pettit, and a spokesman for the Washington County Republican Committee referred to the league as “a Democrat-dominated, left-leaning group intent on smearing a major-party candidate.”

Well, the major-party candidate, whose legal experience consisted of observing proceedings in district judges’ courtrooms and taking a standard “magistrate prep” course, lost Tuesday night to Pettit, who has a strong legal background, including stints as a prosecutor with the attorney general’s and Philadelphia district attorney’s offices.

We believe both Shorraw and Pettit will do commendable work in their new positions, and we congratulate them on rising above the frays they encountered.