December 14, 2006

By Lauren Heaton & Diane Chiddister

Now that the unofficial vote count, the official vote count and the recount have all been completed, Issue 21, the Yellow Springs property tax levy, officially passed by one vote.

Last week’s Dec. 6 recount brought to an end the lack of clarity around the 8.4 mill Yellow Springs levy, which on Election Day, Nov. 7, ended up with the unofficial count in a statistical tie, with 999 votes cast for the levy and 997 cast against. The official count, which included 81 provisional and last-minute absentee votes not included on Election Day, was completed by the Board of Elections on Nov. 28. At that time, the two-point lead narrowed to one, with 1,039 votes for the levy and 1,038 votes against. That result necessitated the recount, which took place last Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday, six Greene County election officials gathered at the Board of Elections office to recount the ballots. If an election results in a margin of less than one half of one percent, as did the vote for the property tax levy, the Board of Elections is required by the state to do an automatic recount of 3 percent of the ballots cast. In this case, the board set out to recount one entire precinct, which is more than three percent of the vote, beginning at random with precinct 442.

Working in pairs, Republican board members Marilyn Reid and Brenda Lewis worked with their Democratic counterparts Anne Gerard and Don Hollister, chairman of the Board of Elections, to recount both the paper ballots from provisional and absentee voters and the long scrolls of tape locked in plastic boxes that recorded the electronic votes cast at polling locations on election day. Tracy Smith, director of the Board of Elections, and Lynn McCoy, assistant director, also joined in the recount, as two technicians from Diebold Elections Systems looked on, ready to answer questions about the mechanics of the new electronic voting machines.

After recounting the absentee and provisional ballots from precinct 442, officials believed they had detected an extra vote cast in favor of the levy and determined to hand count the ballots from all four precincts. They realized part way through the complete recount, however, that the “extra” vote was in fact a ballot that had been mistakenly placed in the wrong precinct. After completing the recount, the officials determined that the vote was exactly the same as they had originally reported three weeks after the general election.

One thing that became clear during the recount was the number of voters who chose not to cast a vote for Issue 21. The number of “blank” votes for the levy out of a total of 2,077 voters was 79, including 46 from polling locations, 26 from absentee ballots and 7 from provisional ballots.

According to Smith, after the official count on Nov. 28, 11 Yellow Springs provisional ballots were thrown out after Election Day because the voters were not registered anywhere in Ohio. On Friday, Dec. 8, a review of the ballots by News staffers showed that seven of those ballots were discarded because the voters were not registered and three ballots were discarded because the voters voted in the wrong precinct. Two voters who voted in precinct 442 should have voted in 443, and one who voted in 443 voted in 442. The remaining ballot was cast by someone who had forgotten she already voted an absentee ballot.

On Dec. 8 Smith said that election workers are obligated to tell voters if they are in the wrong precinct, and that voters who voted in the wrong precinct anyway apparently wanted to do so. The News was able to reach one of the voters whose vote was discarded because of precinct problems, and she said she had been told she was in the right place.

The outcome of the levy vote would remain the same had the three wrong-precinct votes been counted, however, since two of those voters voted for the levy, and one voted against. Out of the seven other ballots discarded due to lack of voter registration, three voters favored the levy, one voted against and three did not cast a vote either way.

The 8.4 mill levy is a five-year property tax levy that is expected to generate $743,000 for the Village and is meant to address a deficit in the general fund.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com or dchiddister@ysnews.com