November 23, 2006

By Diane Chiddister

Yellow Springers must wait almost a week longer to find out if Issue 21, the Village property tax levy, passed.

Last Thursday officials of the Greene County Board of Elections postponed the official count of Greene County Nov. 7 ballots, which was originally scheduled for Nov. 21–22, until next Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 27–28. The count should be finished by midafternoon on Nov. 28, according to Board of Elections Director Tracy Smith.

Included in the official count will be Yellow Springs ballots cast for and against Issue 21. On Election Day, the unofficial results showed 999 villagers having voted for the levy and 997 having voted against. The two-vote difference was considered a statistical tie and the levy result stayed undecided. The official results will be published in next week’s News.

Last Tuesday, Smith said that about 100 Yellow Springs votes have yet to be counted and will be included in the Nov. 28 total. Uncounted votes include 71 provisional ballots, 14 late absentee ballots and 10 to 15 “problem” ballots, which were regular ballots cast on Election Day whose intentions were unclear. Those problem ballots must be reviewed and certified by the Board of Elections, Smith said.

If the difference between votes for and against Issue 21 remains extremely close, or less than one half of one percent of the total vote, the Board of Elections will probably choose to do a recount, according to Assistant Director Lynn McCoy.

The county had a higher than usual number of provisional ballots in the Nov. 7 election due to the new state law which requires voters to show identification when they vote, Smith said. Voters who were determined to not have sufficient ID on Election Day were given provisional ballots.

On Monday, Smith said the official count was postponed because Board of Election officials needed more time to process the provisional ballots. Specifically, he said, officials needed to verify voters’ addresses to make sure they had not voted more than once.

“We don’t want to have someone trying to commit vote fraud,” Smith said.

About 1,400–1,500 of the county’s approximate 2,000 provisional ballots had already been counted by the beginning of this week, he said, and no incidents of voting fraud had been found.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com