WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — After Primary Election Day Tuesday, one state house race was too close to call.
The vote count continues Friday with provisional ballots being tallied by the Luzerne County Board of Elections.
When the ballots were counted Tuesday night, the Republican race for the Pennsylvania House 117th District seat was separated by eight votes.
Republicans incumbent Mike Cabell and challenger Jamie Walsh are both vying for the seat that will likely be uncontested in the general election this fall.
Newswatch 16 was there as Luzerne County election officials wheeled in hundreds of ballots in question.
On Friday morning, 19 ballots were accepted to move forward. That's enough at this time to possibly change the outcome of this race, with just eight votes separating Cabell and Walsh.
Those ballots are the first accepted out of 102 ballots the Luzerne County Board of Elections has reviewed so far.
The board needs to review nearly 350 ballots. Most are mail-in ballots with deficiencies like missing signatures or provisional ballots, which are used when there is a question about the voter's eligibility.
Both campaigns have representatives in the room. Challenger Jamie Walsh is there in person, watching this process unfold.
"When it's an eight-vote differential, the math becomes very important," said Shohin Vance, a Cabell campaign lawyer.
Those eight votes are what made this common electoral process in Luzerne County a little more high-stakes.
Walsh is currently up by just eight votes after the Election Night numbers came in.
The adjudication process for these ballots is incredibly detailed, thorough, and tedious, and it will most likely continue into next week.
"We have a very detail-oriented election board and they are exceptionally thorough, going through each and every ballot to make sure that every valid vote is counted," said Emily Cook, acting Luzerne County elections director.
These ballots that are accepted are for the county as a whole, which means it's not specifically Republican voters or even voters living within the 117th District, so some of these mail-in ballots may not even contain votes for this race between Cabell and Walsh.
"It's no one specific race. It's no one specific precinct. It's all across countywide. This is something we do every election," Cook explained.
"We don't know which ones are Democrat and Republican, and we don't know which ones are in the district," Walsh said.
"I think we can be reasonably sure the numbers for this race will change. How much of an impact they will have, we can't be sure," Vance said.
Cabell, the incumbent, is running for a second term. The business owner from Butler Township won a contested primary in 2022 and eventually replaced retiring lawmaker Karen Boback.
Walsh lives in the Sweet Valley area with his wife and children. He spent years in sales before founding Citizens Advisory of Pennsylvania, a parents’ rights organization.