Much has been made of the recent elections in Pennsylvania New York, New Jersey, Virginia and California. Locally we had a hotly contested race for mayor and city council of Johnstown. The race was between Democratic Councilwoman Sylvia King, Republican John DeBartola and write-in Republican Councilman Chuck Arnone. This post will look at the influence of write-ins and the Johnstown mayoral election.

Looking at the data provided by the Cambria County Election Office above, overall King defeated DeBartola by a margin of 267 votes and there were 319 write-ins. As of this writing I do not know how many of the write-ins were for Arnone.

For the mail-in/absentee votes, King won by a margin of 181 votes with 47 write-ins. For the election day voting, King won by 86 votes with 272 write-ins. The write-in effect was seen in the same day voting.

Looking at the precinct data, King won 13 of them while DeBartola won 4. In eleven precincts the number of write-in votes was greater than the gap between King and DeBartola. In all 4 of the precincts DeBartola won, the number of write-in votes was greater than the gap between King and DeBartola. During the 2024 election, Trump won 10 out of the 17 precincts in Johnstown and won the city by 168 votes.

In the city council race, there were only 33 write in votes. Three democrats, Taylor Clark, Lorraine Brandon Taylor, and Samuel Barber, won seats on council. One republican, Nick Spinelli, won a seat. There was a full slate of candidates from both parties on the ballot which is unusual. Taylor Clark was the top vote getter in this race. He received more votes than Sylvia King (1,927 vs. 1,717). The other republican on council, Chuck Arnone, is not up for reelection until 2027.

I interviewed Shannon Burch-Errett for her school board write-in campaign. There were 238 write-in votes in that race. I assume most of those were for her.

Unlike New York, there is no polling or exit polling in municipal races. It is hard to know what the voters were thinking. It seems pretty clear that there was an influence of write-ins and the Johnstown Mayoral election.