Race for Bullskin Township supervisor is on
A Fayette County judge has ordered the elections bureau to add 17 misspelled or incomplete write-in votes for a Bullskin Township supervisor candidate to the official tally, setting up a race for that seat in the fall.
Roy Thayer appeared on the Democratic ticket in the May primary. Both Thayer and David Butler were seeking the Democratic nomination to replace current Supervisor Bill Geary, who will retire at the end of the year. Butler won the Democratic nod by 86 votes.
Thayer initially garnered 100 Republican write-in votes, and Butler netted 102. With Thayer’s total now at 117, he has secured the Republican nomination, and the two candidates will face off in the November general election.
Under questioning from his attorney, Jack Purcell, Thayer said that while he was campaigning, he told prospective voters registered as Republicans they could vote for him as a write-in candidate on that ticket.
Purcell told Senior Judge Gerald R. Solomon there were 11 ballots with just the candidate’s last name written in, as well as six more ballots with various misspellings of his name. He argued that those spellings were close enough to show the intent of the voter was to vote for Thayer.
Thayer testified his name is commonly spelled incorrectly. Additionally, he said there were two other people named Roy Thayer in his family — his father, who goes by “Jigs” and his son, who goes by Scott Thayer — but neither of them ran for office in the primary, he said.