Dwerlkotte asks for recount of Aug. 2 primary votes

Dean Leon Dwerlkotte, the incumbent and a candidate for sheriff in the Aug. 2 primary election, came in second to his challenger, James (JimBob) McCrary 1,461 to 1,485. There have been closer elections in Cedar County, according to the chief election authority for the county, Peggy Kenney, but this is the first time any candidate has asked for a recount even though others were entitled to one.

Dwerlkotte has petitioned for a recount because the law says he is entitled to petition for a recount since he was defeated by less than 1% of the total votes cast for the office.

He petitioned the circuit court on Aug. 5 to issue a writ pursuant to Chapter 115.585.3,4 or 5 to recount the votes.

Circuit Judge James R. Bickel, on Aug. 8, issued a notice of hearing finding that the Contestant is entitled to a recount of the votes case, pursuant to Section 1115,601 RSMO, as he was defeated by less than one percent (1%) of the votes cast for the office.

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that there be a hand recount of all votes cast in the Election of August, 2, 2016, for the Office of Sheriff of Cedar County, Missouri, to be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday, August 10, 2016, in the Circuit Courtroom in Stockton, Missouri.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that contestant and contestee at said time and place, submit the names of four (4) persons qualified pursuant to Section 115.587 RSMO to assist with said handcount of all ballots cast. The Court will select two (2) such persons from each list to perform the recount. The recount shall take place immediately thereafter and the written report of the findings shall be signed and presented to the Court, all pursuant to Section 115.587 RSMO.

On Tuesday, Cedar County Clerk Peggy Kenney told the Sun “as far as I know, the recount will not cost him anything.”

She said, “Ballots are sealed at the polling place before votes are tabulated. By law, those ballots cannot be unsealed except by court order. Whenever there is a contested election or a recount, typically the judge passes down the order to the election authority telling the authority to unseal the ballots for a recount. In this case, Judge Bickel is handling the recount. That’s how he reads the statute. So, we will be taking the ballots to him. They tell me in Vernon County that he did the same thing over there. So, that’s how he interprets the statute. He’s the judge. He has to hand down the order.”

“So, I don’t know exactly how the recount will be conducted. Typically, we look for voter intent. There are times, when instead of filling in the oval, maybe somebody will put a check mark or an X and the machine may not have read that because the machines are programmed to read the ovals. But if you can clearly tell the voter intent then you can count that as a vote.”

“I don’t know how Judge Bickel is going to handle that because he is conducting that, not me. But on all the recounts that I have been involved in before, the recount was to determine the actual intent of the voter. So sometimes the vote will change by one or two. I don’t know what Judge Bickel is going to allow and not allow.”

“The statewide recounts that we have done, we have always counted the voter intent.”

“We do have people who do check marks. The machine may or may not have counted those. If the check mark is through the center of the oval, then the machine probably counted it. But if it’s off to the side, the machine would not have counted it.”

“If they underlined or circled the name, the machine would not have counted that. If you can clearly tell the voter intent, that is what we are trying to do, to determine the will of the people.”

“You have a team representing both candidates. Both candidates are allowed to be in the room. They typically don’t handle the ballots or help perform the recount.”

Q. What has been the outcome in the past on a contested election?

“On a county election, the result has to be within one percent. Statewide, it has to be within half a percent. Since I have been county clerk, we have done several recounts, but we have never turned an election. The votes may change one or two, but the outcome of an election has never changed.”

“We’ve done numerous recounts since I’ve been County Clerk, but they’ve always been statewide.

“We’ve had numerous school board races and some other county races that have been within one percent but the people have not elected to have the recounts done. The candidate has to ask for it.”

Q. What’s the mechanism for asking for a recount?

“You just file it with the Circuit Clerk or the Circuit Court.”

“Typically, I instruct the people counting the ballots to separate them by party. In this case, you’d just look at Republican ballots in the sheriff’s race and put the others back in their boxes.”

“Then you’d put the properly marked ballots in one stack and the irregularly marked ballots in another stack. Then you go through those one-by-one and determine the voter intent. Obviously everyone has to agree what the voter intent is. If it is not clearly determined then it doesn’t count at all. So, say they filled in both ovals, then that ballot doesn’t count.”

Q. You said the ballots have been sealed up. Nobody has seen these. You just took the machine count?

“Correct.”

Q.  This will be the first time that humans have seen them other than the voter putting them in the machine?

“Correct. We have what are called second chance machines. These machines are programmed so that if a ballot is inserted that is marked in any way other than filling in the ovals, it will spit it back out and say, ‘Improperly marked ballot.’ That gives the voter the opportunity to mark it correctly. Then they send it back through. Sometimes somebody may get one oval filled in and miss the other oval. Maybe their hand is not real steady. So the machine takes it. So you might be able to tell the voter intent if you inspect it even though the machine may not have read it.”

Q. So the way you take care of this is count them all by hand – the ones that were properly marked and the ones that were questionably marked?”

“Right.”

She said she expects the recount to take several hours. She may have the results on Thursday or Friday.

Editor’s note: When the Sun gets the results we will put them in the What’s Happening section of our web page (www.eldoradospringsmo.com) and on our facebook page (El Dorado Springs Sun newspaper).