General election voting in the lower Carbon County area featured municipal races in Towamensing Township and Palmerton Borough.

Meanwhile, there were no contests in balloting for positions on the Palmerton Area School District Board of Education, nor for positions in Bowmanstown and Lower Towamensing Township.

Towamensing Township

Republican Guy Seifert and Democrat Brenda L. Drew were the big winners in the Towamensing Township balloting Tuesday.

Seifert won the six-year term on the township’s board of supervisors, defeating Democrat Scott Mosier by a vote of 396 to 349.

Drew won the race for the four-year term as tax collector, outdistancing Republican Joyce Borger, 398 to 338.

Township voters were also slated to elect two auditors, one for a six-year term and another for a two-year term, but there were no candidates for either position.

Palmerton Borough

In Palmerton, six of the seven borough council seats are expiring, including four four-year terms and two two-year terms.

In the balloting for the four-year terms, there were six candidates. Winning the positions were Republicans Richard L. Nothstein, who tallied 490 votes, and William Gallagher, 390, and Democrats Kris W. Hoffner, 475, and Jeremy Barbosa, 351.

Losing out were Democrat Randy Gursky, who followed Barbosa by just two votes, tallying 349, and Republican Michael J. Ballard, 342.

Meanwhile, there were no candidates for the two two-year terms on the council to be filled.

Mayor Christopher D. Olivia, a Democrat, won re-election to another four-year term without opposition. He collected 536 complimentary votes.

Tax collector Lisa M. Nemeth, a Republican, was unchallenged for another four-year term and topped the borough’s ballot with 662 votes.

Bowmanstown

There were no contested races in Bowmanstown Borough this year, where voters were scheduled to elect a mayor, four council members and a tax collector.

Mayor William Ravert, a Republican, won re-election to another four-year term without opposition. He received 115 votes.

In the council race, four people ran for the four four-year terms, including Democrats Barbara B. Eastland, Robert Moyer and Burdell C. Steigerwalt and Republican Darren R. Thomas.

Moyer was high in that race with 88 votes, followed by Eastland with 84, and Steigerwalt and Thomas, who both netted 80 votes.

Longtime tax collector Maria E. Smith, a Democrat, won re-election to another four-year term of office without opposition. She topped the town’s ballot with 126 votes.

Lower Towamensing

Two candidates on the ballot in Lower Towamensing Township were both unopposed.

They are Supervisor Brent M. Green, a Democrat who sought another six-year term on the board, and Nicole J. Jahelka, who won the Democratic and Republican nominations in the May primary election for the four-year term as tax collector.

Green tallied 320 token votes while Jahelka had 276. She will succeed tax collector Connie Brown, who did not seek re-election.

No one sought the six-year term on the board of auditors that township voters were scheduled to fill.

Palmerton school board

There are four four-year terms on the Palmerton Area School District Board of Education that will be filled this year, for which there were no contests.

Four candidates who won both Democratic and Republican nominations in May were the only ones on the ballot. They are Kathy Lendvay Fallow, Katherine J. Baumgardt, Earl Paules and Barry W. Scherer.

Baumgardt led the balloting with 1,628 votes, followed by Lendvay-Fallow, 1,597; Paules, 1,544; and Scherer, 1,474.

The district includes Bowmanstown and Palmerton boroughs and Towamensing and Lower Towamensing townships.

Editor’s Note:

The vote totals reported in this story do not necessarily include the results of absentee votes. The county elections bureau reported the vote totals are unofficial and subject to the tabulations of the absentee ballots that were not able to be counted in some races last night due to technical difficulties with scanners used to count the absentee ballots.