WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — As it stands right now, Democrat Jeff Coslett, is down by one vote against Republican challenger Bob Thompson.
"We've been friends for 40 years, and as far as I'm concerned, that's never going to change," said Kingston Mayor Democrat candidate Jeffrey Coslett.
"Exactly," agreed his opponent Republican Robert Thompson.
These two men spent hours waiting and watching as the Luzerne County Elections Board went through every mail-in ballot sent in with a deficiency.
All they want to know is who won their very close race.
"This is interesting. This is really interesting," said Thompson. "I've never sat on one of these 24 years of doing it. Never did it. I'm impressed at how these people handle this."
Some mail-in ballots had to be thrown out, including ones missing a signature, ones with identifying marks on the outer envelopes, or some that had multiple ballots inside.
"What I think is impressive, that they kind of scrutinize every vote, you know, and I think that's very important because that's what people do this for they vote for, you know, for this reason. And you know, we're just the end result right now," said Coslett.
Ballots that were questionable but will be counted are ballots that had a miswritten date on the envelope but were time-stamped as arrived before the voting deadline or ones where the envelope was not sealed properly.
The Kingston mayoral candidates are watching this process closely because their race, as it stands now, is down to one vote with Thompson in the lead.
The ballots being counted now will have an impact on the outcome—the seven provisional ballots from Kingston and possibly more.
"I understand there's a couple ballots here, a couple of maybe over 100 that has been counted yet. Like I can accept that that's fine," said Thompson.
The candidates say this process seems harder on the elections board members and their loved ones as it does to them.
"My family, friends, everybody texting, calls, 'What's going on? What's going on?' And now we have to tell them we're not going to know till Tuesday, at least till Tuesday. Finally, so yeah, and like Bob said, this is interesting," added Coslett.
93 mail-in ballots still in question are in limbo, waiting for the voter to show ID by Monday night.
Some of those could be from Kingston, so we will not know the next mayor until Tuesday at the earliest.