UPDATE: Drake gains in provisional vote counting
By:Roger Alvarado
A count of provisional ballots from last week’s election has confirmed that Democratic challenger Paul Drake defeated Republican incumbent Tony Gwiazdowski by 30 votes to claim a seat on the Township Committee.
Consequently, Mr. Drake will be the committee’s lone Democrat once he is sworn to begin his three-year term in January during the township’s reorganization meeting.
The County Board of Elections spent most of Friday afternoon and much of Saturday morning verifying and counting approximately 150 provisional ballots from the township’s 31 districts, of which 85 were deemed acceptable.
Somerset County Clerk Brett Radi said Monday that of those 85, Mr. Drake picked up an additional 46 votes with Mr. Gwiazdowski receiving 39.
The current unofficial tally now has Mr. Drake leading 8,201 to 8,171.
Emergency ballots from one machine in the township which experienced "technical problems" on election day still need to be counted, but won’t affect the election outcome because there are only about seven of them, Mr. Radi said.