Election board hears complaint. Green Party candidate says county failed to count votes.
This article was published in the South Bend Tribune on March 22, 2007.JAMES WENSITS
Tribune Political Writer
SOUTH BEND -- Bill Stant is a "green" with a gripe.
And he's not alone.
Stant, the Green Party's write-in candidate for Indiana secretary of state last year, contended Wednesday that St. Joseph County failed to report his vote totals to the state following the November election, and still has not done so.
Election board members listened to the complaints, but cited a variety of reasons, including cost and the personnel required, for not combing through all the ballots for Stant's write-in votes.
"The higher principle is not what's practical for St. Joseph County, but that the votes be counted," Stant said.Stant also asked the St. Joseph County Election Board for a written apology.
He didn't get it, although the board agreed to take the matter up again at its April 11 meeting.
The candidate was accompanied to the board meeting by several supporters who expressed sentiments in favor of Stant's position.
When votes were counted following the November election, county officials listed a total of 181 write-in votes being cast. The tally did not identify the write-in candidate receiving the votes by name because that information was on the sealed ballots.
Election officials could not count any of those ballots by hand on election night, according to County Clerk Rita Glenn. She said state law requires that the ballots be kept inside the voting machines for at least 10 days following the election in the event someone files for a recount.Later, when the county certified its vote totals to the state, no votes for Stant were recorded. The ballots have still not been counted.
Both James Korpal, the Democratic member of the election board, and Glenn said that the form provided by the state did not include a line for certifying write-in candidates.
Because of the way write-in votes are handled, election officials said, there was no way of knowing then whether all 181 votes went to Stant.
And there is no way of knowing now short of sorting through all of the more than 77,000 ballots and counting the votes by hand, election officials said Wednesday.
By law, write-in candidates' names cannot be listed on the ballot because they have not earned what is known as "ballot access."Stant toured the state last year in search of the 30,000 signatures of registered voters that he needed to get that access. When the effort fell short, he opted to become a write-in candidate.
That means that anyone who wanted to vote for him needed to physically write his name on the ballot.
"I don't think an apology is warranted," said Thomas Botkin, the Republican member of the election board, explaining that an apology would imply wrongdoing.
Botkin told the Green Party contingent that the votes were counted and "we know Bill Stant didn't win."
The question, Botkin said, is how precise the election board needs to be and at what point it needs to be practical. "We're going to have to do some more work on it," he said."I don't think an apology is in order," agreed Korpal, after the meeting.
Korpal said the issue still needs to be sorted out and that Stant "needs to know how many votes he got."
According to Brad King, Republican co-director of the Election Division of the secretary of state's office, county officials were obligated under state statute to count and certify each vote for state office candidates.
When that doesn't happen, the legal remedy is to file a lawsuit to compel counting of the votes but, according to King, the deadline -- 22 days after the election -- has long passed.
Stant said only 39 of the state's 92 counties certified votes for him. According to the secretary of state's office, there were 342 votes certified statewide for Stant. Stant said the actual total might have been close to 2,000 if all the votes had been counted.
"For the record, the system doesn't work," said Stant, who contended that the entire election infrastructure is built around the two principal parties. "We don't matter."
Staff writer James Wensits:
jwensits@sbtinfo.com
(574) 235-6353
St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN