As West Chester school board write-in counted, at least one challenger may have a chance

With 80 percent of the voting precincts tallied, members of a slate of West Chester School District write-in candidates have a shot at winning at least one seat on the board, their supporters say.

Projections based on Chester County Voter Services numbers given to the challengers Wednesday night showed three write-ins - Gary Bevilacqua, Rick Swalm and Sue Tiernan - on track to finish ahead of Galen Plona, the lowest-tallying member of a GOP-backed slate. Two Democratic Party candidates lag far behind.

The three write-ins are part of a group calling itself West Chester VOTE. Tiernan has the lead, said West Chester VOTE member Dianne Herrin, who has been keeping count for the slate.

Republican candidate Edward J. Coyle appears to have won a two-year board seat.

Republican-endorsed candidates have been the victors in West Chester school board races for as long as anyone can remember.

But in June, a coalition of Republicans, Democrats and independents formed West Chester VOTE and decided to challenge the GOP slate.

They said the Republican candidates and several sitting school board members were influenced too much by the party leadership and by right-wing county groups. They put up candidates for five school board seats with four-year terms and one seat with a two-year term.

The GOP candidates and the school board members who support them said they were acting independently of the Republican Party and conservative organizations.

The write-ins, which totaled more than 41,000 in the 45 Chester County precincts that make up the West Chester district, have to be counted by hand.

So the Chester County count, which started on Nov. 18, has yet to be completed. Voter Services employees took Thanksgiving and Friday off; the tally is scheduled to resume Saturday with final results expected Saturday or Monday.

Five West Chester School District precincts are in Thornbury Township, Delaware County. On Wednesday, the Delaware County Board of Elections certified that county's election results, including the count from Thornbury Township. The board agreed with a West Chester VOTE request to include in its tally a number of variants of the write-in candidates' names.

In Chester County, about 44 percent of the 95,300 votes cast for West Chester school board were for write-ins; in Delaware County, about 35 percent of the 6,800 votes cast in the races were for write-ins.

Marian Schneider, an attorney for the West Chester VOTE candidates, said it was more difficult to cast a write-in vote on the machines in Delaware County than on the ones in Chester County, which use a different system.