Republican Tony Allen conceded the race for Lancaster Township supervisor Friday after a painstaking, 3½-hour manual recount showed his Democratic opponent had won by 13 votes.

"That's it," Allen said after the tally was announced by county elections officials shortly before 2:30 Friday afternoon.

The results will bring an end next month to Allen's 18-year career as a supervisor and topple the 2-1 Republican majority on the board. Lancaster will be the first township in the county to be governed by a board that is majority Democratic.

Benjamin H. Bamford will join fellow Democrat Kathy Wasong on the board in January. She was elected to a six-year term in 2005.

The manual recount, conducted by nine county elections workers Friday morning, only added to Bamford's margin of victory.

The new total shows that he won by 13 votes, or less than half a percentage point. The unofficial results from Nov. 3 showed Bamford had won by 11 votes.

Bamford got 1,192 votes to Allen's 1,179, according to the manual recount, which was ordered after 27 registered voters in the township petitioned the Board of Elections.

Allen said he would not take the case any further.

"We lost two votes. We just felt we wanted to have the correct numbers," he said. "And it was less than half a percentage point."

Allen, 71, of 13 Parkside Ave., is a retired industrial electrician who is completing his third six-year term as a supervisor and is the board chairman.

Bamford is a 45-year-old real estate developer who lives at 1031 Woods Ave. He received 50.2 percent of the vote to Allen's 49.8 percent.

Greg Paulson, a member of the county's Democratic Committee who observed the recount on Bamford's behalf, said he was pleased at the outcome — time-consuming as it was.

"Allen was entitled to a recount," he said. "Ben is more than satisfied. It really shows the importance, though, of voting by paper ballot. Otherwise there would be no way to check."

A team of nine election workers took part in the review of each of the 2,371 votes cast in the race to make sure the machines had scanned them property.

During the review, they flagged a half-dozen or so "questionable" ballots — ones on which voters appeared, at least initially, to have marked boxes next to both candidates' names or forgotten to tear off the stubs.

In most of those cases, the voters accidentally dotted the box next to one candidate's name but filled in the box next to the other's. Elections officials, solicitor Mel Newcomer and the parties agreed on how all but one of those ballots were to be judged.

They also set aside 32 ballots that, according to the electronic scanners, showed that voters hadn't selected candidates in the supervisors race — and a few where they didn't vote for anyone on the ballot at all.

The manual review of those ballots confirmed the scanner's initial finding.

"What a waste, what a waste," said Immo Sulyok, a member of the Republican committee who was observing the recount.

"The balance lies in all these voters who showed up and chose not to vote. There's certainly enough to make a difference."

tmurse@lnpnews.com