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Saturday, May 13, 2006

Ind. Courts - Hagen files for recount in Noble judge race

Kara Hull of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports today:

With certified election results putting him just four votes behind the winner in the race for Noble Superior I Court judge, Albion attorney Steve Hagen filed for a recount Friday.

Hagen, who is asking that results from all precincts be recounted, said he feels obligated to get a second opinion.

He ran against Ligonier attorney Robert Kirsch, who captured 1,420 votes on election night with Hagen receiving 1,415. Hagen received one more vote earlier this week when three provisional ballots the county received were counted. The other two ballots were only for school board races. Another candidate, Hal Hossinger, received 595 votes.

“I’m just doing this to confirm the election results,” Hagen said Friday. “I think I have to. I just owe a responsibility to those who contributed to the campaign, to my family and myself.”

Opponent Kirsch said Friday he would probably ask for a recount, too, if he were in Hagen’s shoes.

“That’s a narrow enough margin that I think the loser in such a contest would probably always request a recount,” he said.

For those interested in recount mechanics in this new era of electronic voting:
The recount will not mean that all ballots cast in the county will be hand counted, said Brian Black, chairman of the Noble County Election Board.

While all absentee and the three provisional ballots cast will likely be counted by hand, the MicroVote machines will still be used to tally all other votes, he said.

The recount, which Myers estimates will take one day to complete, must be done by June 30.

Though erase marks on absentee ballots – which are filled in by pencil – can sometimes fool electronic scanners, forcing election workers to count them by hand, the bigger occurrence this year was voters marking the wrong party listed at the bottom of the card, Black said.

In these cases, Black said, it was clear by the candidates marked that the voter was supporting one party but had filled in the wrong bubble at the bottom of the sheet. The electronic scanners won’t count these ballots, Black said, forcing election workers to count the votes themselves. Black didn’t know how many absentee ballots had to be tallied by hand this year because of this error.

“You don’t foresee change, but you never know,” Black said. “It’s all interpretation. It’ll be interesting to see; I hope we did it right.”

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 13, 2006 12:22 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts