Wed
May 3 2006
03:03 am
Knox County Update
By: JustJohnny

I worked on one of many counting boards tonight tallying up the paper ballots for Knox County. We stopped around 2:30am with ~30 precincts remaining to be counted. Counting Board members are coming back in tomorrow at 1pm to resume counting the paper ballots.

My observations:
1) Lots of republican ballots with Tyree's name on them --sorry folks, he's not a republican and your vote for him wasn't counted!
2) From the several precincts I was involved in counting, Steve Hall and Mayor Ragsdale were neck and neck, with Hall passing him in each with a small number of votes (Doesn't mean anything, just an observation).
3) Almost every Democratic ballot I seen had Tyree's name on it. There also seemed to be a great GOTV effort by write in's like Amy Broyles and one or two other write ins.
4) TONS of people (republicans) voted paper ballots without writing in anyone.

Good night....and good luck!

UPDATE: 5:15 PM WED
All the precincts paper ballots have been counted and the totals were being worked on when I left a little bit ago...

Topics:
Mark's picture

If that many write-in's have been counted?

Submitted by Mark (not verified) on Wed, 2006/05/03 - 8:19am.

If that many write-in's have been counted, why have they not released any write-in figures?

JustJohnny's picture

.....they told us

Submitted by JustJohnny on Wed, 2006/05/03 - 11:14am.

....that the early and absentee would be released when we left and that the numbers for the election day ballots would be released when they were all counted....

rikki's picture

curious

Submitted by rikki on Wed, 2006/05/03 - 11:22am.

TONS of people (republicans) voted paper ballots without writing in anyone.

That's odd. Anyone know whether this was a coordinated effort? It has the effect of making the 5% hurdle just a little harder to achieve. 

Michael's picture

5%

Submitted by Michael on Wed, 2006/05/03 - 11:37am.

Is it 5% of votes, or 5% of voters?
~m. 

rikki's picture

5% of votes

Submitted by rikki on Wed, 2006/05/03 - 2:52pm.
Five percent of the ballots cast in whichever party's primary must be paper ballots containing the candidate's name. I assume the blank paper ballots JustJohnny spoke of still count as ballots.
Barry's picture

I confess - I put Tyree down

Submitted by Barry on Thu, 2006/05/04 - 12:31am.

I confess - I put Tyree down on my ballot, and realized pretty quickly it wouldn't count. There was a sheet posted at the table listing all valid write-ins and he was listed, but I forgot he was a Democrat.

I might've crossed it out, but I figured, hey, maybe somebody will count it accidently :)

spintrep's picture

one person, one "no vote"

Submitted by spintrep on Thu, 2006/05/04 - 1:23am.

a few anecdotal stories:

1. I voted write-in last Thurs. during this election. I was told my entire ballot would be thrown out if I mistakenly entered a name on a wrong line. I dismissed this from the worker, assuming it had been a long day and that the worker might be new to the write-in process. Now you post this and I wonder - exactly what does get a ballot tossed?

They have to reflected somewhere in the report...

No way they are considered "blank" or end up part of the percentage, right?

2. I have turned write-in ballots over the years without marking them - as a protest to lower the final percentages, I started doing this after workers once told me they were not sure the machine would record properly if I didn't check at least one candidate using the machine process. (I never looked into it further, but I am still curious about this if someone here knows.)

I have advocated signing in and "not voting" for years. It serves as a de facto no-confidence vote. I wish real no-confidence votes could be integrated into the process, along with a hierarchy of instant runoff voting.

Also, I was once refused a write-in ballot during one of the primaries, being told it that it was a "party" race and didn't apply! I walked away after already signing in, wondering if my just signing in tweaked the numbers. Never looked into this either, but needless to say, they love me at my precinct!! 

Paul Witt's picture

hahaYea, writing the name on

Submitted by Paul Witt on Thu, 2006/05/04 - 12:52pm.

haha

Yea, writing the name on the wrong line will mean that vote didn't count but not the entire ballot.  Greg Mackay said previously that they'd be looking for any excuse to count a vote.  Misspellings and even writing only part of the name were supposed to count.

From what I understand anyway.  Maybe when Johnny wakes up he can clue us in.

JustJohnny's picture

did it count?

Submitted by JustJohnny on Thu, 2006/05/04 - 4:03pm.

Here is what we were told:

1) If the name was misspelled or even close to a candidates real name, we were to follow the intent of the voter and count that vote.

2) If a voter wrote in a candidate that wasn't in the primary they were voting in, we were to void (and write void over) that single line on the ballot. The remaining lines were counted and included. Same went for write-ins being wrote-in for the wrong office/seat. We all know Tyree isn't running for County Commission, but we still couldn't count it if his name was in the wrong spot.

We didn't void the entire ballot, unless each line on the ballot was voided, and that didn't happen with any of mine.

We only reported the number of votes we tallied. We didn't report voided votes, though we did turn in the orig ballots. I don't think that answers your question, but it's all I know.

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