The recount of the votes cast for the office of district attorney in Schuylkill County, which was to take place this morning at the courthouse in Pottsville, was postponed until Wednesday morning.

Hearings on the petitions to recount the vote for supervisor in Schuylkill Township and mayor of Mahanoy City proceeded this morning as scheduled.The delay in the DA recount was caused by a last minute petition filed by another group of Democratic voters. President Judge William E. Baldwin scheduled a hearing to be held on this petition this morning.The result of the Municipal General Election Nov. 5, as released by the Schuylkill County Election Board, gave District Attorney-Elect Christine Holman, Republican, 15,265 votes and Incumbent District Attorney Karen Byrnes Noon, Democrat, 15,192 votes.The first petition filed was by Brian Tobin, Tim Seip and Jennifer Laughlin requesting the recount and re-canvass of the absentee ballots upon the failure of the board of elections to properly count the absentee ballots and correctly compute the election machine votes and absentee votes for Noon.The second petition, for which a hearing was called, was filed by 21 petitioners asks for a recount and re-canvass of all of the approximately 1,600 paper ballots cast in the general election.The petition states the voting was done by means of a Diebold electronic voting machine and paper ballots for absentee and overseas voters, which are then scanned through an Accuvote 2000 optical scanner/reader and write-in votes on the actual voting machines which is part of the paper record of the election.The petition claims the margin of error is less than one-half of 1 percent of the total county vote for the office of district attorney, which is within the margin that would trigger an automatic recount.The petitioners said an error in counting absentee and overseas ballots occurred in the computation of the votes cast for district attorney.The petitioners allege there appeared to be a computer glitch during the counting of absentee ballots in that the optical scanner would not read some of the ballots. The petitioners allege that such count and canvass of the absentee ballots on Nov. 5 was in fact inaccurate and does not show the true number of absentee votes cast for each of the candidates for the office of DA.The petitioners allege Noon is the winner of the election and they further allege that a substantial error has been committed in the counting of the votes and absentee and overseas ballot for the office of district attorney.They ask the court to issue an order to appoint a committee to conduct a recount of the countywide paper ballots, including the absentee and overseas vote related to the error in counting of absentee and oversee ballots and the provisional ballots and the write-in ballots, if applicable.The named petitioners are Marcia A. Bonner, Robert C. Bonner, Heather L. Bixler, Marybeth C. Matz, Rebecca A. Elo, Elizabeth A. Bettinger, Hugh M.S. Reiley, Judith A. Schweich, Joseph F. Spotts III, Leo G. Martin, Tim Seip, Jen Laughlin, Brian Tobin, Michael P. Vigoda III, Lori A. Spotts, Charles M. Noecker, Douglas J. Taglieri, Bruce J. Kosack, Marie C. Noon, Paul N. Noon and Elizabeth Noon.Other recountsThe recounts which did get under way today at the county courthouse were as follows:A recount was held for the office of supervisor in Schuylkill Township. The results of the Nov. 5 election gave Charles J. Fayash, Republican, 188 voters, and Linda A. Decindio, Democrat, 187 votes.A recount was held for the office of Mayor of Mahanoy City. The results gave Dennis Wiesner, Republican, 472 votes, and Nancy A. Petritsch, Democrat, the incumbent mayor, 475 votes.