Absentee, provisional votes could change election
By Nick Claussen
March 10, 2008
More than 2,300 votes still need to be counted from last Tuesday’s primary election in Athens County.
The votes probably won’t change most of the local races, but could have an impact on several of the close campaigns, such as in the race for the Democratic nomination for Athens County commissioner. That race featured seven candidates, and the top two are separated by just 143 votes.
Without the additional votes, Charlie Adkins leads with 2,649 votes, and Jim Pancake is in second place with 2,506.
Larry Payne won the Republican nomination for the same County Commission seat, defeating Joe Yanity III 1,641 to 1,250.
All of the provisional votes and a portion of the absentee votes have yet to be counted, but they will be totaled in the final official count on Thursday, March 27. The Athens County Board of Elections will meet on Tuesday, March 25 to resolve issues over disputed ballots.
Debbie Quivey, director of the county Board of Elections, explained Friday that 33 ballots are disputed, and the board will decided at the March 25 meeting how many of the ballots will be counted.
The board still has at least 431 absentee ballots to be counted, Quivey said. Those include ballots that came into the board office last week by mail and some that were voted absentee at the board office the day before Election Day, she said.
On that Monday, 272 people voted absentee at the board office, she said. Of these voters, only five were from Nelsonville (where Pancake is from and where he performed very well in the election), according to Quivey. The figures show 133 of these voters were from the city of Athens, while the rest were spread throughout the county. Pancake also did well in Athens, winning seven of the precincts.
The Board of Elections also has 1,900 provisional ballots to count, Quivey said. The provisional ballots all have to be checked over, which is why they take so long to count. People who move from county to county, precinct to precinct, or even within their own precincts and do not change their addresses with the Board of Elections have to vote provisionally, she said. Board employees then have to check the addresses of the voters, as well as work with other counties that had provisional voters moving there from Athens County to help them verify addresses, Quivey explained.
All this means that at least 2,331 total ballots have yet to be counted, with an additional 33 disputed ballots that could be added to the mix, Quivey said.
“It could change the commissioner’s race,” she acknowledged, adding that she does not see the additional votes changing races for county prosecutor, sheriff or the Republican nomination for county commissioner.
The extra votes could also change some Democratic and Republican central committee races, such as in Nelsonville, where in the Democratic Central Committee 3-1 race, Keller Blackburn leads Challie Abraham by just one vote, 39 to 38, and in the Democratic Chauncey Central Committee race, where Fredricka Shover leads Ginger Mender 105 to 97. The Republican Central Committee race for Glouster 1 is tied with Fred Cavey and Ralph Coey each having 12 votes, while the Republican Nelsonville 4-1 race is separated by just one vote, as Mary Ellen Hurd has 10 votes compared to Dennis Wolfe’s nine.
PANCAKE SAID SATURDAY that with the high number of student votes left to be counted in the provisional votes, he believes he has a good shot at winning.
“The students were voting for me,” Pancake said, adding that he won several student precincts. A lot depends on whose votes are left to be counted, but Pancake said he feels god about the election.
“My own thought is I’ll probably win this if the students vote like they did Tuesday night,” he said.
Adkins said Sunday that “it’s a little bit nerve wracking,” having to wait until March 27 for the final count. He added that the race had some good candidates and he appreciates all of the votes he has already received.
“It’s a wait-and-see game now I suppose,” Adkins said. He added that he’s anxious to get past this race and is looking forward to the November election.
The commissioner race has seven candidates, so it is likely that the 2,300 votes left to be counted will be spread out among the candidates. In addition, not all of the outstanding ballots will factor into the race, since many of them are probably Republican ballots.
The Board of Elections reported that 13,618 Democratic votes were counted in the unofficial count on Election Day, compared to 3,310 for Republicans.
Quivey said Friday that the poll workers and board employees all did a good job on Election Day dealing with the high water that forced one polling location in Bern Township to move and forced some people to vote at the Board of Elections office when they could not make it to their polling sites. Despite the bad weather, the election ran smoothly, Quivey said.
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