Seventeen votes. That was the margin of victory – out of more than 87,000 votes cast – by which Johnny A. “Johnny O” Olszewski Jr. defeated Jim Brochin in the Democratic primary for Baltimore County executive.

Tonight the Baltimore County Elections Board declared Olszewski the winner after undertaking a manual recount of the June 26 primary.

Three days of recounting by the board yielded a handful of “over votes” for each candidate.

(These are ballots in which a voter made marks next to several candidates which the ballot scanner recorded as a vote for none of them. Election officials were able to determine the voter’s intent in some cases and assigned the vote to the appropriate candidate.)

Prior to the recount, which was requested by the Brochin camp, Olszewski had won the primary by 9 votes.

Barring a legal challenge, the 35-year-old former teacher and ex-state delegate from Dundalk will face Republican Al Redmer in the November general election.