November 16, 2006

By Diane Chiddister

When will Yellow Springers know if Issue 21, the local property tax levy, passed? They might know next Wednesday, Nov. 22. And then again, they might not.

About 100 Nov. 7 ballots from Yellow Springs voters are yet to be counted, and those ballots will be included during the official vote count on Nov. 22.

Those ballots will be added to ballots already tallied and could determine whether or not Issue 21 passes. On Election night, the final tally for Issue 21 was 999 votes for the levy and 997 votes against, according to Greene County Board of Elections Deputy Director Lynn McCoy. That number was considered a statistical tie and the fate of the levy remained up in the air.

The Nov. 7 total was considered the unofficial result, and the Nov. 22 total will be the official election result, McCoy said. The additional 100 ballots include 71 provisional ballots cast by Yellow Springers, 14 late absentee ballots and about 10 to 15 problem ballots which were voted on Election Day with unclear intentions. Those unclear ballots need to be reviewed and certified by the Board of Elections, Board of Elections Director Tracy Smith said Tuesday.

If the official vote count on Nov. 22 results in a less than one half of one percent difference between those who voted for and against the levy, the board will probably choose to have a recount, McCoy said last week.

Provisional ballots were given to voters who were determined to have not presented the necessary identification required by state law for the first time this year. Voters were required to present a photo ID, such as a driver’s license, or proof of address such as a utility bill or a bank statement.

Because the ID law was new this year, there was some confusion among poll workers as to its requirements, and that confusion most likely resulted in more voters than necessary being given provisional ballots and not being allowed to vote by regular ballot, according to local attorney Ellis Jacobs, who, with a group of volunteer lawyers, formed the Montgomery County Voter Protection Coalition. The attorneys made themselves available to provide information to voters and poll workers on Election Day.

He received word early Tuesday morning that some Bryan Center poll workers in Yellow Springs were asking voters to provide more ID than necessary, Jacobs said, when one of the volunteer lawyers, who lives in the village, was told to provide proof of his address along with his driver’s license, since his license had a different address than that in the polling book. The attorney knew that he only needed to provide his driver’s license, and alerted Jacobs to the problem. Jacobs immediately called the Greene County Board of Elections, and a board member was sent to the Bryan Center to inform poll workers of the mistake.

However, while the confusion over necessary ID was not continual, it did persist to some extent throughout the day at both the Bryan Center and the Presbyterian Church polling places, according to several voters. One of them, Amanda Banaszak, said that at the Bryan Center late Tuesday morning, she was given a provisional ballot because her driver’s license address did not match the polling book, while her husband, who voted at a different time with the same situation, was given a regular ballot.

“If someone had to vote a provisional ballot and shouldn’t have, I’m sorry,” said McCoy this week. “You do the best you can sometimes. At the end of the day, they did vote and that vote will count. In the past that person would have been turned away.”

What became clear during the Nov. 7 election, according to Jacobs, is that with both new electronic voting machines and the new ID requirement, the job of a poll worker is a difficult one, which probably requires more training than is currently received. In Greene County, poll workers received two hours of training.

“One thing we’ve learned is that the election judges need a lot of support to do their job correctly,” Jacobs said.

Issue 21 is an 8.4 mill property tax levy which Village Council put on the ballot to raise additional revenues for the Village’s general fund. The levy, if passed, would provide about $743,000 annually for five years, which Council has said will be used to support both the Village’s human services and a new roads maintenance program. Council in October voted to cut most Village human services if the levy does not pass.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com