Recount Produces Different Results twice, and ends in a tie! — Mail-in Ballot process proven insecure.
One poll watcher’s experience.
by Ken Cromar – former CH City Councilman
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When people vote, they expect that their vote will be properly counted, without mistakes or cheating.
That’s why the law allows for each candidate to have a poll watcher to observe the ballots being counted. Curt Crosby, a candidate for Cedar Hills Council, asked me to be his designee to represent him. I agreed. Wow! What a roller-coaster ride it turned out to be.
First, Curt Crosby won the sixth and final slot in the Primary election on August 10th.
Then, the straggler mail-in ballots were added to the count which gave a one-point win to Brian Miller. Finally, Thursday September third’s recount produced a 8-vote win for Miller that was about to be announced to the public, until this poll watcher’s tally (mine) proved the City’s numbers inaccurate.
After some quick recalculations the final result was a TIE between candidates Miller and Craig Clement. This could result in a coin toss to determine the winner of the sixth place and a run at the November General Election!
Yes, elections in Cedar Hills are not without drama!
In 1995, I was elected as a new Cedar Hills City Councilman by one single vote! A recount found an incorrectly counted ballot. That resulted in a two-point win for me. For weeks, couples would come up to me and say it was their two votes that put me over the top. All of them were right. Every vote counts. Or at least they should!
The two previous CH elections of 2013 and 2011 also had concerns. We always seems to have some sort of election drama in CH. (more on that below)
Because of regular questions in our elections, Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible Government thought it would be wise to carefully watch Cedar Hills’ first experience with mail-in ballots during July and August. On July 30th, the City Recorder met with candidate Council Candidate Curt Crosby, Sam Bushman and I to explain her procedures. By the end of the visit she admitted that she could not say with 100 certainty that the ballot boxes, which not attended by sworn polling officers during the month it was in the City lobby, were not tampered with, and that she knew the election was honest and fair.
Many, including the Mayor, have touted mail-in voting as wonderful because the numbers increase. But, having higher voter percentages is meaningless, in fact dangerous to a fair election, if you can’t verify every vote is legitimate.
In other words, just because there are more ballots in the ballot box to count, doesn’t mean they all got there legally and lawfully. CH’s mail-in ballot process stretched out the number of voting days to 29. And it essentially made each and every one of the approximately 2000 homes in CH a potential polling place. That’s just not reasonable.
Don’t misunderstand. No accusations are being made here. Even if there were, they could never be proven, because no one really knows with 100% certainty what happened to the ballots once they got mailed from the post office. Therein is the problem with mail-in ballots. This primary election proved to me that mail-in ballots have made CH’s election less secure, and more open to potential compromise and the stealing elections through mischief, mistakes and/or dishonesty.
Here’s the various results and what I learned during Cedar Hills’ 2015 Primary election:
Why the Primary Vote and Recount anyway? An Overview:
This years’ election there were 9 candidates for the three open Cedar Hills Council seats. By law, that number had to be narrowed to six for the November General election. The August 10th vote count, which went until 1 a.m. (it was exhausting!), resulted in the sixth and final slot being won by Curt Crosby with 268, four votes over Craig Clement with 264, and ten votes over Brian Miller’s 258.
Then, over the next few days straggler mail-in ballots, reportedly post-marked August 10th or earlier (reportedly, “none smeared”), produced nearly 100 late mail-in ballots which were counted two weeks later at the next Council meeting on August 25. The results changed two candidates jumping past Crosby; with Brian Miller winning with 284 votes, Craig Clement with 283, and Crosby at 279.
The Recount Began
Crosby asked for a recount. It occurred Thursday, September 3rd. He appointed me, Ken Cromar, as his designee to watch the recount of the ballots.
So, the assumption would be that the recount of all the ballots would produce the exact same results, right? Wrong. Virtually every candidate’s final vote total changed.
It was an intensely tedious process to recount all the mail-in ballots for the Primary election, sitting in a room with the ballots counters from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Retirees Glenn and Bobbi Dodge along with Connie Paxman did a wonderful job. I carefully watched over Glenn’s shoulder as he would speak out each name on each ballot and Bobbi and Connie would each mark their own tally sheet. I also kept my own tally, which later proved critical to accurate final results. The team was careful and attentive, and when errors were caught, Colleen Mulvey was called over to confirm errors and correct the count immediately.
There were a number of interesting ballots; including one with no votes at all, and a couple with four votes when only three were allowed thus spoiling their ballot completely. This was the case with at least one ballot, which cost my candidate, Curt Crosby, at least one vote. But, Curt agreed with me that accuracy and fairness is paramount to a fair process.
When it was all over, we were exhausted and anxious to learn what the five precincts total came to, as we were too busy to keep a running total. While Ms. Mulvey and Gretchen Gordon were gone to tally the numbers in their spreadsheet, I tallied my numbers. When they returned Colleen announced that Brian Miller had won the final slot by eight votes. This did not match my total which showed a TIE between Miller and Craig Clement. They said they were certain their total was correct. I assured them that mine was, as I had checked it twice.
They then called out the votes for each candidate precinct by precinct. It was discovered that in Precinct #2 that Brian Miller had received 31 votes, not 39 as Mulvey’s total showed. They went back to her office search for the error. When she came back she brought the ballot envelope announcing that the three ballot counters had signed their names to the envelope certifying a 39 when it was actually 31. It was apparently an error of transposing a 1 into a 9, but it was an honest error.
In other words, had I not been there watching the ballot recount, and tallied the precinct totals myself, the City would’ve have incorrectly announced an 8-point win for Brian Miller. Instead, we had a certified TIE vote between Miller and Craig Clement.
Yes, over the years, voting in Cedar Hills has been interesting and dramatic.
In 2011, I ran for Council with Jerry Dearinger and Paul Sorensen in a relatively tight race. That year six of our poll watchers were NOT allowed to watch the ballot counts, and were told to listen from afar. The six signed Affidavits declaring that they were not allowed to watch the ballots and confirm the markings. They became instead vote listeners. A recount was requested but not granted. The laws have changed since then. (There were many other irregularities which may be explained later.)
In 2013, the then appointed-Mayor Gary Gygi ran at least part of his campaign from one of the City buildings. This was proven through GRAMA requested emails which contained photos. (Note: Gygi was appointed by the Council to fill Mayor Eric Richardson’s position after he resigned to face Federal Bank Fraud charges, a year in prison and $110,000 in restitution fines.)
Going through the new mail-in process in CH I’ve learned how easy it would be to cheat an election, even just a few votes. I will not share here the specifics, lest I give anyone ideas. But, I’ve shared many of the examples Curt Crosby, Sam Bushman and I contemplated, with Scott Hoganson who is the Utah County Deputy Clerk Auditor in charge of elections. He added our list to his own list of concerns and examples of how cheating is facilitated.
Conclusion:
Again, it’s not a question of whether the count of the ballots that made it into the box was correct. (4th time is the charm!) The most important question is how the ballots got into the box, were they legal and legitimate, and were there any ballots that didn’t make it into the box. With this mail-in system, we’ll never know!
The City officials involved with supervising the voting are not bad people. In fact they are good people doing the best they can with the questionable system they are required to work under.
Election officials must be willing to contemplate that though most are honest, it is possible that some are willing to break laws and cheat elections to get “their guy” into office.
Not good enough though to assume honesty, but must implement measures to insure mischief-proof elections. No one at the City should touch a ballot or guard or handle the box who is not a SWORN election official.
We will never know if this Primary election was tampered with or if the results are true and accurate.
We do know the opportunity for election tampering was there for at least a 29-day window.
Would it surprise you to learn that on the night of August 10, just prior to the counting of the votes, I asked for the group’s attention, and explained that I was tearing up my ballot in protest over an election process I already knew was in question. I stated that the City Recorder admitted on July 30th she did not know with 100% certainty that the ballot box or ballots put into the box were legitimate and untampered votes, nor that all cast ballots made it into the box. I then unsealed the envelope for the first time, in front of the group. I found that the required contents were all there, tore the ballot in half and handed the ballot to Colleen the City Recorder “in protest” on an election outcome I knew could not be certified as being completed without error or mischief.
I believe it would be wise for the City to reconsider the mail-in ballot approach and return to the proven safe and secure single-day voting approach of the past as quickly as possible. We shouldn’t have to worry that the vote totals will keep changing again, and again, and again.