Supporters of some candidates who thought they had won on Nov. 2 were shocked to find out that they hadn’t won after all.

Three notable examples were the Monroe County coroner’s race, the Lehigh County Executive’s contest and New Jersey’s much-closer-than-expected gubernatorial slugfest.

In Monroe, after all of the precincts had reported their walk-in voting results, Republican challenger Ed Kmetz was leading incumbent Democratic coroner Thomas A. Yanac Jr., 10,157-8,491.

Kmetz supporters were euphoric thinking their candidate had knocked off an incumbent, who is finishing his first four-year term, but Kmetz knew there was a slew of mail-in and absentee ballots that needed to be counted yet, and as ex-president Donald Trump and other Republican candidates found out in 2020, these mail-ins significantly favored the Democrats and altered first impressions.

After all of these additional ballots had been counted, Kmetz’s sizable lead of 1,666 votes had evaporated and turned into a 4,157-vote loss. The Times News believed 100% of the vote meant Kmetz was the winner and published that result. The paper updated the story the next day.

In Lehigh County, a voting service used by The Morning Call newspaper called the county executive’s race early Wednesday morning for Republican challenger Glenn Eckhart over incumbent Democrat Phillips Armstrong, who is completing his four-year term.

Later in the morning, however, the service found that some mail-in and absentee ballots had not been counted. It mistakenly believed that when the county indicated that all precincts had reported their votes that the tally included these votes, which it did not. When they were, Armstrong had jumped into a 2,500-vote lead.

A similar mistake was made by The Express-Times in Easton and its website, Lehigh Valley Live. The website posted this editor’s note: “An earlier version of this story declared Republican challenger Glenn Eckhart the winner based on Lehigh County unofficial results that showed 100% of precincts reporting. Lehighvalleylive.com mistakenly interpreted that to mean all the votes had been counted, but not all mail-in ballots had been counted at the time of publication, and the additional counting later put Democrat incumbent Phillips Armstrong ahead.’’

In New Jersey, where incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was expected to win in a walk, possibly by as much as 13 percentage points, Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli was running neck-and-neck with Murphy on election night, Nov. 2.

It took two more days before The Associated Press called the race for Murphy after mail-in ballots strongly favored him in even some Republican stronghold counties. Ciattarelli did not concede the race until Nov. 12.

There are several close races that still have not been made official, including the third judicial seat in Lehigh County Court where three seats were being contested and one of the seats on Commonwealth Court.

There are several school board races throughout the five-county Times News region that also are still up in the air as the mail-in and write-in votes are being verified.

Some counties are dealing with a much higher than normal number of write-in votes, especially for school board contests, which are usually yawners, but this year with COVID-19 masking and vaccine issues being front and center and questions arising about what is being taught in the schools, there was an unusually large number of candidates, along with write-in contenders who decided to jump into the races at the last minute.

For those of us in the media, we will need to revisit our election night strategies. In the past, most contests were decided by midnight on Election Day, but this is no longer the case, especially in close races with mail-in, absentee and write-in ballots not being counted in some counties until the day after Election Day.

While this is being done, the rules might be rewritten yet again, because there are several Republican-sponsored bills in the Pennsylvania General Assembly to change the way mail-in ballots are being handled.

While I am at it, I want to mention how incredibly stupid it was that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf gave his mail-in ballot to his wife, Frances, to be dropped off, a clear violation of Pennsylvania’s voting laws.

The governor’s office called it “an honest mistake.” You can’t brush something like this aside and make a case that the governor doesn’t know the law. If he didn’t, he should have.

At a critical time such as this, when the voting process is under such intense scrutiny, to give the Republicans, who have been railing about voter fraud, especially with mail-in and dropped off ballot, a propaganda gift of this magnitude is unconscionable. What were the Wolfs thinking?

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.