Recanvass changes totals, but not election outcome

A recanvass of Whitley County election results Thursday produced some changes in vote totals for nearly two dozen candidates, most of which were minor, but didn’t effect the outcome of any races.
Republican Election Commissioner Nancy Jones said the changes to the vote totals Thursday weren’t necessarily surprising.
“Any time you are dealing with human beings, there is room for error,” she noted. “The numbers were very little off. I didn’t think that they were going to find much wrong, and I thought that about what we found would be off, not enough to change a race.”
Whitley County Clerk Tom Rains said he is glad that the recanvass was done, and hopes that lessons he and his staff learned doing the recanvass Thursday will result in a more accurate and faster recalculation of election night totals in November.
The recanvass included rechecking vote totals in 10 different races, including: state representative, state senate, judge-executive, circuit clerk, county clerk, jailer, first district magistrate, second district magistrate, fourth district magistrate, and the wet/dry vote.
The recanvass started about 9:05 a.m. in the fiscal court meeting room with members of the Whitley County Board of Elections opening the box containing mailed in paper absentee ballots.
Board of election members read off the names of candidates in contested races being recanvassed that were written down by two county clerk’s office employees, and then totaled to check against the figures tallied on election day.
Out of 218 paper absentee ballots mailed out to voters, 192 were returned. Of those five were voided, including three people that didn’t sign the outside of their return envelope and two ballots that came in through the mail the day after the election.
The paper absentee totals were then added to the totals from voting on the absentee voting machine in the county clerk’s office.

Under votes
Of the 332 people that voted absentee on the electronic voting machine in Rains office on the Republican ticket, 48 didn’t cast a vote in the judge-executive’s race, which is called an under vote.
Under votes occur when people cast their ballots, but don’t vote in particular races. For instance if 100 people voted on a particular voting machine, and of those 98 voters cast a ballot in the judge-executive’s race, and two did not, then there would be a two-vote under vote in that race for that one machine.
Other under votes on the absentee voting machine included: 42 in the Republican jailer’s primary, 40 in the state senate race, 34 for county clerk, and 32 in the state representative and circuit clerk’s races.
“Voters don’t vote the whole ballot folks. They go in and pick one or two races, and walk out of the machine,” Rains said. “These new machines register under votes. This was the first election we have ever been able to register under votes because of an upgrade on the voting equipment.”
Rains said the upgrade cost about $300, and was mandated by the federal government after the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

Rest of recanvass
During the remainder of the recanvass, totals printed out from the back of each voting machine in every precinct were read off by either a member of the board of elections or someone from Rains office with a board of elections member supervising.
The totals for each candidate from each voting machine per precinct were added up by two county clerk’s office employees, and then compared to the total recorded for that candidate in that precinct in the ledger containing the official vote count.
It took election officers until about 3 p.m. Thursday to finish tallying results in recanvassed races.

Why the changes
Each voting precinct had at least two voting machines in it. Every precinct had a new E-slate voting machines, which is designed to accommodate disabled voters, but can be used by other voters, and the county’s ELECTronic 1242 machines. Some larger precincts had two 1242 machines in them.
Whitley County officials have software that is designed to tabulate the results from each precinct, and combine the totals from the 1242 and E-slate machines. The Fusion software, which was designed to merge the results from the two different machines, malfunctioned on election night forcing county officials to totally rely on hand calculations.
Rains estimated that about 7,000 figures were added together election night to get the results.

Mistakes made
Of the 66 totals that were recanvassed Thursday, including those for 64 candidates and the wet dry vote, election officials had to make 35 total changes in their election book. This altered the vote totals for 25 of the candidates and of the totals for the yes and no votes on the Williamsburg alcohol referendum.
Most totals were changed as the result of an error adding the totals for each machine, forgetting to add a total, or from transposing a number, i.e. recording a 74 when the total should have been 47.
In the Highland Park precinct, election officials forgot to record the totals from the Democratic races and the wet/dry vote in the election book, or ledger. In the Armory precinct, the results from the wet/dry vote weren’t recorded in the election book.
In the Goldbug precinct, election officials forgot to record the totals from the E-slate voting machine, which had two voters that day, one Republican and one Democrat. Some election precincts didn’t use their E-slate voting machine at all on Election Day.

Vote totals that changed, included:
• State Senate – Olin Carmichal, lost 64 votes, new total 1,161 votes.
• State Representative – Dewayne Bunch, lost 33 votes, new total, 1,902 votes; James Larry Goins, gained one vote, new total, 661 votes.
• Circuit Clerk – Gary Barton, gained one vote, new total 4,645 votes.
• Judge-Executive – Pat White Jr., gained one vote, new total, 3,915 votes; Mike “Benji” Campbell, gained one vote, new total, 1,864.
• County Clerk – Ronnie Faulkner, gained one vote, new total, 2,310.
• Sheriff – Lawrence Hodge, gained one vote, new total, 5,241.
• Jailer, Republican Primary – Will Leach, gained three votes, new total, 1,048 votes; Greg Petrey, gained three votes, new total, 141 votes; Larry Patrick, gained five votes, new total, 786 votes.
• Jailer, Democratic Primary – Arnold Eugene Young, gained seven votes, new total, 398 votes; Troy Sharp, gained 17 votes, new total, 843 votes.
• First-District Magistrate, Republican Primary – Jerry Bunch, lost one vote, new total, 168 votes; Roger Wells, gained 10 votes, new total, 742 votes.
• First-District Magistrate, Democratic Primary – Travis Wilson, gained 16 votes, new total, 165 votes; Lloyd Chandler, gained three votes, new total, 51 votes; Kenneth Bargo, gained two votes, new total, 66 votes; Richard D. Rose, gained five votes, new total, 73 votes.
• Fourth-District Magistrate – Darren L. Smith, lost three votes, new total, 155; T.O. Elliott, gained one vote, new total 474.
• U.S. Representative, Democratic Primary – Kenneth Stepp, gained 14 votes, new total, 714; James W. Tapley, gained five votes, new total, 346 votes.

We goofed
During Thursday’s recanvass, candidates pointed out two results listed wrong in last week’s issue of the News Journal under the precinct break down of each race.
In the Midsprings precinct, Rep. Charlie Siler’s total was listed as 21, but should have been listed as 201.
In the Courthouse precinct, Roger Keith was listed with 24 votes, but should have been listed with 10 votes.
We apologize for the error.

Candidate thanks poll workers
Whitley County Sheriff Lawrence Hodge, whose two opponents asked for the recanvass Thursday, said he appreciated the work of the poll workers, and doesn’t believe that they would attempt to rig an election as some losing candidates have suggested.
“The people that work these election polls get paid barely nothing. I think they are honest people. I am proud of the job they do. We couldn’t even have an election without them. They wouldn’t cheat anybody on purpose,” Hodge said.
“I would like to say thank you to all the workers that worked this election.”
Hodge said he had no problems with Thursday’s recanvass because he was surprised to have lost in the Emlyn precinct, which was the only precinct he didn’t win, and wanted to see the results double checked.