Candidates claim election was a sham

Nearly a dozen candidates, who lost in last week’s primary election, have asked for a recanvass of the votes noting that because of large margins in some races some feel that there must have been some hanky panky with the county’s voting machines.
11 candidates in seven races gathered on the steps of the Whitley County Courthouse Monday morning to discuss their views about the recent election, and then to go into the county clerk’s office to ask for a recanvass of votes in seven races.
Many candidates asking for the recanvass say they had gotten several calls from people saying that they tried to vote for one candidate and the election machine cast the ballot for another candidate.
However, none of the candidates interviewed could say exactly how they thought this was done and provided no evidence of it.
Former sheriff H.D. Moses, who had never lost a sheriff’s race prior to last Tuesday, said he asked for a recanvass because he believes the machines were “messed with.”
Moses garnered 2,185 votes to incumbent Lawrence Hodge’s 5,240 votes and Evelyn McCullah’s 1,192 votes.
“I just feel like we got a bum deal,” Moses said. “I think it was rigged. Everybody in that clique was elected.”
Moses said he has read literature on the matter, and that it would be a simple thing to do to rig the voting machines.
“I know that is what happened,” Moses said.
Evelyn McCullah, the other losing candidate in the Republican primary for sheriff, said she asked for a recanvass because “machines all over the county were reported to have been malfunctioning.”
McCullah said that about 9 a.m. on election day, she got a call reporting that a woman tried to vote at the Emlyn precinct, and machines there weren’t allowing votes to be cast for her.
“Just the one lady said when she pressed the button by my name that another button lit up. She said her light would not light up on the machine,” McCullah said. “I heard the Jellico precinct had five or six complaints to the people that were working the precinct that the same thing was happening there.
“Oak Grove, Boston, Pleasant View, there were complaints coming from every where. The attorney general’s office is getting numerous complaints.”
McCullah said that she personally talked to 12 people who told her they had problems voting in the election.
In the jailer’s race, Will Leach, Les Moses and James Privett have asked for a recanvass in the Republican primary for jailer, and Arnold Eugene Young asked for a recanvass in Democratic primary for jailer.
Oline Carmical asked for a recanvass in the state senate race, Dewayne Bunch in the state representative race, Mark Lawson in the county clerk race, Linda Chinn Schutz in the circuit clerk’s race, and first-district magistrate candidate Doug Rains.

Rains outraged by allegations
Whitley County Clerk Tom Rains, whose office conducted the election, was outraged by the allegations, and says that it couldn’t have happened.
“The machines can’t be tampered with,” Rains said. “These machines are excellent machines. These machines are good machines. They were tested.
“They were checked, sealed, and delivered to the polling place. Not one seal was broken They haven’t been tampered with whatsoever. There were zeros on the machines before voting started, and they were viewed and signed by the four election officers.”
Rains noted that Whitley County had the biggest ballot in the state with 93 people running for 12 offices, which means there has to be many losers in some races.
“When you get in a political race, there is going to be one winner, and there will be losers,” Rains said. “When you take people that spent as much money as they spent, and put their families in hardship while running a campaign and they lose, it hurts.
“It not only hurts in your heart to lose, it also hurts in you pocketbook to lose because you are out working for a job that you were denied by the public, but that is why we have elections. My job election time is not an easy job, but it is an honest job. It will be done honestly, and every vote everybody gets will be counted.”

Few apparent reports in Frankfort
While some of the candidates may be getting calls from disgruntled voters claiming problems casting their ballots, these same voters apparently aren’t calling the state board of elections to report them.
Les Fugate, Director of Communications for the Kentucky Board of Elections, said that aside from a few of initial complaints on election day that the board of elections and secretary of state’s office have received no further complaints about election problems in Whitley County.
“Beyond the initial Election Day issues – nothing seemed to be major – we haven’t gotten anything,” Fugate said.
Fugate said the state board did receive some complaints Election Day about people supposedly trying to vote for one person, and having another name light up on some machines.
“We did get calls, particularly from candidates about that on Election Day,” Fugate said. “The clerk as well as the vendor sent people out to those precincts and saw no evidence of that. I don’t know how you could change it for one person, and not have it for another.
“We did receive calls about it. The clerk and vendor did take action to check it out, and saw no evidence of it that’s not to say it didn’t happen, but certainly they saw no evidence of it.”
Vicki Glass, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office, said Friday that at this point her office can only comment on the total number of election complaints and the nature of complaints that it has received, but can’t say which county the complaints have come from.
A press release from the Attorney General’s office noted that of the 184 calls made to the office’s election fraud hotline from 6 a.m. through 7 p.m. on Election Day, 30 calls came in from across the state dealing with voting machine complaints. There were another 32 calls on Election Day reporting general election fraud.

Other allege wrongdoing
Doug Rains, a first district magistrate candidate, said he also believes that the machines were fixed.
“At 7 p.m. on election night, I had 109 votes in all eight precincts, and I should have had all that in two,” Rains said. “You know everybody doesn’t lie to you. I saw a lot of people, and you’d think half would sure stay with you. If I am going to lose, I am going to lose fair.”
Rains said he thinks that there has to be something wrong, and that people just didn’t vote for another candidate.
“I have had people say that they tried to vote for me, and that it wouldn’t light up, and went to another candidate,” Rains noted.
Lawson said his reason for asking for the recanvass was similar to that of some other candidates.
“I had a lot of phone calls stating that when they voted for me, another candidate’s light came on,” Lawson said.
“I just think there is a lot of stuff that didn’t add up. I am not a sore loser. I am here because people have called me, and we really need to follow-up on this.
“If they can do it here, they can go all the way to the president the same way. We need to try and make sure that we get it stopped right here. If I lost fine and dandy, I don’t have a problem with that.”
Lawson added that he had a friend, whose father has been dead for eight to 10 years, and that the name of his friend’s father has appeared on the ballot every time the friend has gone to vote.
“He has asked them to take it off every time. This time was no different, so I would like them to look up Earl B. Martin and see if he voted this time,” Lawson noted.
Leach said that he doesn’t plan to ask for a recount if “everything works out right” during the Thursday’s recanvass.
“I just think the machines have been messed with, or something has been set up to be the way it is,” Leach said.
Leach, a two-term constable who finished second in the Republican primary for jailer, 1,045 votes, said he can’t believe he got that few votes when he has gotten 1,500 votes in a constables race before in just one district. Ken Mobley won the Republican primary for jailer with 3,060 votes. Leach finished second followed by James Privett, who had 867 votes, and Les Moses with 839 votes.

Some have a lot of questions
Not all candidates interviewed are at least directly alleging fraud, but simply say they have a few questions they would like answered and that the results aren’t squaring up with what some people are telling them.
Jailer candidate Les Moses said he doesn’t know if the machines were “rigged” or if there was a glitch in the system or if there is something else that happened, and called the recanvass a “first step” in determining what happened.
“There is so much controversy over people having trouble on election day that has come up to each and every one of us,” Moses said. “We have heard even reported to the clerk here.
“It just seems like it has been ignored. We just want to make sure that it is done right. It is not anything with not winning the election, we just want to make sure this thing is being done the right way.”
Moses said that since Election Day about 50 people he has spoken to have told him that they had trouble with the machines, or knew of somebody that had.
Oline Carmical, who unsuccessfully ran for state senate and lost by nearly 5,000 votes in Whitley County, filed for a recanvass, but concedes nothing will change enough in his race to affect the outcome.
“I am down here just to support these other folks,” Carmical said. “I don’t really have standing to go past this point. Some of the other candidates do have standing past this first stage.
“I have heard all kinds of complaints, but then you do every election. There is always something to some of the complaints. The question is what complaints are valid and what aren’t.”

Want to see improvements
Democrat Bob Terrell, who wasn’t in a primary last week, said he came down to the courthouse to witness the other candidates filing for a recanvass Monday because he feels it is important for people with issues to have them reviewed and checked.
Terrell said he would like to see changes made in the way the election night results are released to the public.
“I also would like to see in November when they report the votes in the fiscal courtroom that it be reported so you can read the screen,” Terrell said. “The print was hardly readable, and I think it ought to be reported by precinct.
“These candidates, win or lose, have worked real hard. They have spent money and time. They have gone out to do their best then when the election results come in, there ought to be more respect for them as candidates.”
Rains said he feels that the election night vote tally went rather smoothly, even though the electronic counting software didn’t work properly in merging the results from two different machines.

Rains hears few complaints
Tom Rains said that since Election Day, he has asked probably 500 people if they got to exercise their vote properly on Election Day, and everyone of them told him they did.
“I have not had one person I asked tell me any differently,” Rains said. “The votes where people voted Election Day were counted that night, and this was the outcome. I’m sure people are hurt.
“They spent their hard earned money on these campaigns, and it hurts for someone to lose a race. I have compassion for people like this. I know it hurts to lose.”
Rains said he had two complaints election day regarding voting problems.
One woman called saying she punched one candidate’s name, and that another candidate’s name lit up.
“I said, ‘Did you leave the machine satisfied?’ She said, ‘I got to vote. I just corrected it.’ I said, ‘Did you get to vote for the person you wanted to vote for?’ She said, ‘Yes, I did,'” Rains noted. “She was very upset.
“Our machines are made so you can correct your vote if you voted for the wrong person. You just punch it off, and vote for the right one.”
He said that in both instances the complaining party got to change their vote before leaving the election booth.
“In their heart, all these people that went in to vote, even these candidates, they got to vote for who they wanted to, and that is the American way,” Rains said. “I haven’t heard any candidates tell me they didn’t get to vote for themselves, or who they wanted to.
“It is just someone else that came up to them, and told them that. It is a neighbor or somebody agitating them just telling them that that is what makes you mad.”
Rains said he was contacted by the Attorney General’s office, but the biggest thing that office was concerned with was people, whose names were purged for being out of state, were allowed to vote if they wanted to.
He said there were only two people in that situation.
“We did have some violations reported,” Rains said. “They sent their gentleman down. He talked with Deputy Sheriff Tim Shelley. Democratic Election Commission Member Damon Brown, and my technician from Harp Enterprises, and he was totally satisfied that we fixed what the problem was,” Rains said.

Election Day complaints
Rains said officials had to respond to four complaints at precincts before lunch on Election Day, and that some boards inside machines were replaced as a precaution.
“We just replaced it to make sure everything was working fine, just to satisfy everybody. We didn’t find any problems everywhere we have been,” Rains said.
About 8:15 a.m. in the Pleasant View precinct, Rains said election officers had trouble opening the new e-slate voting machines, and officials were sent down to assist with that.
About 8:30 a.m., a matrix board was replaced at the Pleasant View precinct after a couple of complaints from people.
“You can’t punch the person’s name and vote for them. You have to punch the little square by the name and vote for them,” Rains said.
“We saw a lot of people that hadn’t voted in four years, and they thought that if they punched the name, they got to vote for them, and that doesn’t work. We had a few calls on that, and that was the biggest problem.”
About 9:15 a.m. in the Martin Springs precinct, Rains said an election technician replaced a board after a complaint was made.
“There was a complaint, and we replaced the board. We voted before, and we voted after that, and everything was perfect. There wasn’t anything wrong with it whatsoever,” Rains said.
“We let the people vote it, and the election officers vote it, and it was perfect.”
About 10:15 a.m., at the Boston precinct, Rains said the matrix board was replaced in one machine by technicians with Hart Enterprises.
“We test voted it, and everything was perfect,” Rains said.