The approval of several hundred more ballots from last week’s election has catapulted the first runner up in this year’s school board race to within 3 votes of the winner’s circle.
In the initial vote totals from Election Night, Brandy Whittaker had found herself 55 votes behind Kyle Ward in the struggle over the third of three available seats on the Alamance-Burlington school board.
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Two awaiting final outcome; two others assured of ABSS board seats
Ward’s margin of victory nevertheless shrank to just three votes on Tuesday when Alamance County’s board of elections attended to some of the usual mopping up that follows any countywide vote.
During its three-hour meeting that afternoon, this bipartisan five-member board approved about half of the 721 “provisional” ballots that were withheld from the preliminary vote count due to questions about the voter’s residency or eligibility to vote.
This infusion of over 350 ballots has all but wiped out Ward’s already-thin lead over Whittaker. It has also affected the relatively close race for North Carolina’s 63rd state house district, where Democrat Ian Baltutis had enjoyed an initial edge of 236 votes over his Republican rival Ryan Moffitt. In this case, however, the provisional ballots have actually widened Baltutis’ lead to 288 votes – which is nevertheless within the statutory margin for Moffitt to demand a recount.
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In the meantime, the county’s board of elections has yet to rule on another 32 ballots that are currently slated to be bumped from the final vote count. Its members will determine the fate of these ballots on Friday when they finalize the election’s results.
‘Curing’ the absentee vote
The first order of business when the elections board convened on Tuesday was to decide the final dispositions of mail-in absentee ballots that had been left out of the preliminary tally because of some omission or defect.
The state gave these voters who submitted these ballots until Tuesday at noon to “cure” these defects. According to county’s election staff, six of the voters had done so by the state’s cut off, while about 12 others did not. The elections board unanimously agreed to add the half dozen cured ballots to the Election Night totals.
The local elections board went on to individually review two other ballots from overseas voters who insisted they couldn’t meet the state’s photo ID requirements.
One of these individuals had informed the local election office that they had applied for a federal ID that had yet to arrive. The other had simply stated that they don’t have an American photo ID that they could submit to the county.
The board voted 3-to-2 to accept the first of these two overseas ballots. The three-member majority in favor of its inclusion comprised Republicans Kevin Harrison and Ben York as well as Democrat Elaine Berry. Democrat Homer Ashby and Republican Gary L. Jackson opposed the ballot’s approval.
Elaine Berry went on to urge her colleagues to give the same benefit of a doubt to the second overseas voter, who had made no claim to have applied for a federal voter ID. Berry pointed out that the state board of elections advises its local equivalents to accept a voter’s explanation unless they have a good reason to distrust the voter’s signed affidavit.
“And I don’t think we have grounds to believe that the affidavit is false,” she insisted.
Berry went on to cast the only vote in favor of this ballot’s inclusion while the board’s other four members favored its removal from the vote count. Even so, state law apparently demanded a unanimous vote for the ballot’s rejection and so Berry’s lone stand was enough to secure its inclusion.
From ‘provisional’ to ‘approved’
The board then turned its attention to 721 provisional ballots that were cast by voters whose names didn’t appear on the voter rolls when they went to the polls. The county’s election staff deemed 329 of these ballots to be valid in their entirety, and they found 21 others to eligible for certain races.
Of those that were judged fully eligible, 124 ballots had been “pre-validated” by the election staff using records at their disposal. Another 96 individuals had voted provisionally because of photo ID issues that they were able to “cure,” while 31 had shown up to vote without their IDs, which they subsequently presented to the county’s election staff.
The staff also recommended the inclusion of 25 ballots cast by voters whose registrations had been deactivated because they hadn’t voted in the last two Presidential elections.
“They had to vote provisionally because they were not in the system,” explained election staff member Nicole Matherly before she advised the board’s members to sign off on these ballots.
Another voter had filled out a provisional ballot after she inadvertently handed back a curbside ballot without actually filling it out.
“She was an elderly lady,” elaborated Dawn Hurdle, the county’s election director, “and she didn’t realize the ballot was inside the privacy sleeve. It was only when the poll worker came back out with an ‘I voted sticker’ that she realized something was wrong.”
[Story continues below photos of Board of Elections during Wednesday’s meeting.]
The election staff also presented the board with 68 ballots from voters who had shown up to vote at the wrong precinct on Election Day. Of these, 49 had gone to precincts within their state house districts, while 19 had showed up in polling locations outside their districts. The staff advised the elections board to count the first 49 ballots in their entirety but to disregard the state house selections of the other 19 individuals.
The board of elections considered another two ballots that had been submitted by voters who had failed to meet certain state-level requirements to vote. Because these two individuals met all federal voting requirements, the board agreed to count their selections in the federal races that appeared on the ballot.
The board’s members unanimously rejected another 371 provisional ballots that the election staff had judged ineligible for inclusion. These ballots were cast by voters who, in some cases, had signed up to vote outside of Alamance County or who had no record at all of having registered to vote. Another 76 of individuals had registered after the deadline to do so elapsed on October 9.
Not final ‘til Friday
After all was said and done, the county’s election staff was able to add 357 ballots to the preliminary vote count from Election Night.
These additional votes had a particularly noticeable effect on the race for the Alamance-Burlington school board. At this point, Ward has managed to retain his precarious third place position – with 24,342 votes or 104 more than he had on the night of the election. Whittaker, meanwhile, picked up an extra 156 votes, for a cumulative tally of 24,339 that’s just three votes behind Ward.
These updated results are likely to change slightly when the local elections board meets again on Friday to certify the final results of the election.
According to Hurdle, the board’s members will have to tie up some loose ends before they sign off on the official vote count that afternoon. These outstanding issues include the removal of two ballots cast during early voting by people who would go on to pass away before the date of the election on November 3.
The election staff has also flagged two other ballots because they were filled out by convicted felons whose voting rights have apparently not been reinstated. These individuals will have an opportunity to plead their cases on Friday. Otherwise, their choices will be struck from the official tally.
Hurdle said that another 28 ballots are slated for elimination because the voters who cast them never completed the registration process that they began during early voting. In order to make their registration official, these individuals needed to mail back a card that the election office had sent them to confirm their addresses. In each case, these cards have been sent back twice as undeliverable.
