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riental’s Town Board election is not quite over. There will be a recounting of votes cast in the recent election for the Oriental Town Board’s fifth seat.

Candidate Hugh Grady requested the recount on Tuesday (November 15) a few hours after Pamlico County’s Board of Elections’ official canvass of the November 8 race put him three votes behind write-in candidate Warren Johnson.

Grady, owner of the Inn at Oriental, says he takes issue with some of the write-in votes that gave Johnson, a sitting commissioner and late-comer to the race, the winning edge.

The recount will take place on Tuesday, November 22 at the county courthouse in Bayboro. It will mark the third Board of Elections meeting at which considered Oriental’s Town Board race was considered.

Tight Race For Fifth Seat

The race for that fifth seat had been tight since the ballots were tabulated on election night. At that time Grady had a three vote lead.

But after the Board of Elections met last Thursday, November 10 to consider some additional write-in votes, 6 more votes moved in to Johnson’s column, putting him three ahead of Grady. Among those six, were several that carried only the last name of the candidate and two that gave different first names, Walter Johnson and William Johnson. (It is those votes, in particular, that Grady objects to counting for Johnson.)

Warren Johnson and behind him, Mayor Bill Sage at the Tuesday, November 15 meeting of the Oriental Board of Elections which certified that Johnsons’s write-in campaign won the fifth seat on the Town Board. Hours later, candidate Hugh Grady filed a request for a recount which will happen next Tuesday.

When the Board of Elections convened on Tuesday November 15 to conduct its official canvass, it opened and counted four more ballots which had been cast provisionally. Those ballots did not change the outcome of the race for the board’s fifth seat, as each candidate – Grady and Johnson – gained a vote. That left the margin at three votes separating the two candidates and indicated a win for Johnson, who has served on the Town Board for two of the last three terms.

Slim Margin Allows For Recount

Johnson ended up with 162 votes and Grady with 159 for a total of 321 votes cast. The winning margin — 3 votes — was slim enough for Grady to be able to ask for a recount, which he did Tuesday afternoon.

As Pamlico Elections Director Lisa Bennett told the Board of Elections Tuesday, North Carolina law states that the losing candidate may request a recount if the margin of victory is no more than 1% of the number of votes cast for the two candidates. (The 3 vote margin comes in at less than 1% of the 321 votes.)

Bennett says that on November 22, three elections judges from outside of the Oriental precinct will conduct the actual “hand to eye” recount, using the tapes from the Ivotronics touch screen machines, as well as going over the votes cast at curbside, the early votes cast at the Courthouse in the weeks leading up to the election, and the provisional ballots.

Elections director Lisa Bennett and the Board of Elections, from left, Delcene Gibbs, Dave Cox and Judy Smith.

The three-member Board of Elections – Chairman Dave Cox, Judy Smith and Delcene Gibbs will observe, as may members of the public. The recount starts at 10a. Bennett says it could take all day.

Cox says that in accordance with NC law, there is a recount done in every county at every election (even if a candidate doesn’t request it) in order to verify the accuracy of the Ivotronics machines. He says that as far as he knows, there has not been a discrepancy found between what the machine said the totals were and what humans tallied for totals.

Write-ins and Judgment Calls

The crux of this recount for Oriental’s 5th Town Board seat will likely then be the write-in votes, and in particular the “judgment calls” that the Board of Elections had to make on several of the ballots that were awarded to Johnson last week.

“Judgment calls” and surmising the “intent of the voter” is how Chairman Cox described the Board’s work last week (click here for the story.) in counting the write-ins that didn’t spell out the candidates’ names perfectly.

Asked if the state elections guidelines spoke to counting votes if the first name were different from that of the candidate, Cox said no, but that those scenarios are mentioned often in the training sessions that the Board of Elections has attended.

The Town of Oriental will pay the costs of next Tuesday’s recount. Elections supervisor Bennett says each of the three judges will be paid $9 an hour, while each Board of Elections member is paid $45 each time they meet.

Lessons From Provisional Ballots

At its canvass meeting on November 15, the Board of Elections considered 7 provisional ballots cast in Orientals elections (and several cast in other municipalities)

The provisional ballot arrangement allows a voter whose name may not be on the rolls to cast a vote on the day of an election; that ballot is then set to the side so that elections officials can – after election day and under calmer circumstances – determine whether they were eligible to vote. If so, the envelope would be opened and the vote counted.

Among the four provisional ballots that were allowed, one was a voter whose name had changed because the voter had married since the last election. Three others were determined, on closer inspection, to be living within the town limits and so eligible.

Three of the provisional ballots were not allowed – one because the would-be voter lived just outside the town limits. Two others were not allowed because while they had registered to vote at DMV, they’d done so after the early October deadline for being registered in time for the November 8 polling.

While North Carolina election law does not allow a person to register on the day of the election, there is one way a resident may register once the early October deadline has passed. They may do that if they go to the courthouse during the two weeks of early voting and register and cast their ballot at the same time.

Elections Chairman Cox suggested that in coming elections, voters who are not sure that they will be registered in time to vote on election day, should consider that one-stop early voting arrangement to guarantee that they can cast their ballot.

Protest Filed in Grantsboro Town Board Race

Oriental and its recount are not the only “5th seat” issue on the Board of Elections’ plate. A formal Election Protest has been filed in the Grantsboro election where Chip Dickinson won the 5th seat on that town’s board with 18 votes.

Write-in candidate Robert Smith III received 11 write-in votes. Smith’s father, Robert Smith, Jr wrote the elections board that Robert Smith III should be seated to that last seat on the Board instead of Dickinson. His formal complaint maintains that Dickinson “sold his primary residence on November 1” and “moved to Bayboro, NC which put him outside the city limits of Grantsboro, NC and therefore not eligible for the office.”

A preliminary hearing on the protest has been called for Monday, November 21 at 9a. Some new elections law territory may be explored in this case.

Elections supervisor Lisa Bennett says that state law stipulates that a voter has to live in the jurisdiction, but it appears to be silent in explicitly stating that a candidate has to live there. Elections Board Chairman David Cox notes that the state law does say that in order to serve, a person has to live in the jurisdiction.

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Grantsboro Election Protest Preliminary Hearing – Monday, November 21, 9a

Recount for Oriental Town Board Race Between Warren Johnson and Hugh Grady – Tuesday November 22, 10a

Both events take place at the County Courthouse in Bayboro and are open to the public.

Posted Thursday November 17, 2011 by Melinda Penkava