Loser in primary coin toss wants hand recount of commission votes
By Jim Phillips
April 17, 2008
The Athens County commission candidate who lost the Democratic primary by a coin toss has filed a legal complaint, asking for a hand recount of the vote.
In the first tally of votes in a seven-candidate race, Charlie Adkins, a former employees’ union president at Ohio University, came up tied with former York Township Trustee Jim Pancake for first place.
By law, this meant the winner had to be decided “by lot,” which in this case took the form of a coin flip. The toss went in Pancake’s favor, and in a recent recount of the votes, the two men remained tied, meaning Pancake’s coin-decided victory stands.
The first vote count had the two men with 2,854 votes apiece. Each man lost one vote in the official recount, which involved a partial hand recount checked against the computer’s count of the same portion of the votes, then a computer recount of the entire vote.
On Tuesday, however, Joyce Childs, Adkins’ sister, filed a hand-written civil complaint in Athens County Common Pleas Court, requesting a hand count of the primary ballots.
As of about 2 p.m. Tuesday, officials in the county Clerk of Courts’ office were saying the complaint would have to be re-filed, because only Childs, not Adkins himself, signed it. Tuesday, April 15, is the deadline to request a recount, so Adkins needed to fix the complaint before 4 p.m.
Presuming that is done, however, it is not clear what the next legal step will be.
Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren admitted Tuesday afternoon that he was not up to speed on the applicable law, but said he would have some answers in short order.
“Right now, we’re still researching it, and we’ll know by tomorrow (Wednesday) morning,” he said.
Prior to fixing his legal complaint, Adkins told The Athens NEWS Tuesday that he has questions about whether all the votes in his race were counted on Election Day.
“A couple of people told me that they voted, they went up to put the ballot in the machine, and it was broke,” the candidate claimed. The voters told Adkins they then gave their ballots to poll workers, to feed into the machines after they were repaired, he said.
“(Those) people didn’t have the opportunity to accept or decline their ballots,” he said.
When a voter feeds a ballot into the machine, he or she is given the option to push a button accepting or declining it. The machine reports any under- or over-votes on the ballot, and seeing this information might prompt a voter to re-examine a ballot before submitting it.
Adkins suggested that if someone who wanted to vote for him first filled in a circle for another candidate, then X’ed out that vote and filled in Adkins’ circle, the machine might invalidate the entire commission vote on that ballot.
If such a voter didn’t get a chance to review over- and under-votes, a vote meant for Adkins might not have gotten counted, the candidate argued.
“I believe that every vote should count, and if Pancake wins, he wins,” Adkins said. He said he is not suggesting in any way that the election was fixed, only raising the issue of whether the final vote count was correct.
His concerns on this score are only increased, he said, by the fact that the final vote totals for both him and Pancake changed in the official recount.
Adkins said his understanding of the law is that the Common Pleas Court will now have to rule on whether he can show evidence that could affect the outcome of the primary.
If the court finds Adkins’ evidence persuasive, he said, it will order a hand-count of the ballots, which Adkins might be required to pay for, if it does not change the election outcome.
Penny Brooks, deputy director of the Athens County Board of Elections, said the cost for a hand count would be $50 per precinct. With 69 precincts in the county, this would add up to $3,450.
Pancake said Tuesday that he had no comment on Adkins’ recount request, though he did note that the paper ballots have already been recounted. “Hell, those ballots are about worn out,” he suggested.
The winner in the Democratic primary will face Republican Larry Payne, an Athens Area Chamber of Commerce official, in November for the one open and contested seat on the county commission.
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