BUCKHANNON — In an exclusive interview, Upshur County County Clerk Carol Smith told Mountaineer Journal that there are approximately 21 absentee ballots and 7 provisional ballots that could decide the tie between Shelia Sines and incumbent Councilman CJ Rylands in Buckhannon’s city council election. On Election Night, Rylands and Sines were both tied at 423 votes each.
“At this time, there were 7 Election Day provisional ballots, and the decision will be made during the canvassing (by the Canvassing Board), if those ballots can be counted or not,” Smith expressed. “Depending on what the provision was, some will and some won’t, possibly, depending on the reason.”
Smith explained what classifies as a ‘provisional ballot.’
“A provisional ballot is for different circumstances: when you have a voter that moved and didn’t change their address by the end of the close of the books, then that voter is required by law to go to their correct precinct, and vote the correct ballot. So, if you have someone that moved into your precinct, that’s a provisional ballot. As long as that voter voted in the correct ballot, then, the law allows the canvassing board to count that ballot.
If you have a poll worker that didn’t vote absentee or early, then if they are working out of their precinct, they are allowed to vote a provisional ballot.
Another circumstance: if someone received an absentee ballot and decided to vote on Election Day and they didn’t take it to the polls with them on Election Day, that is someone who would have to vote a provisional ballot. There are some other reasons, but those are usually the main reasons.”
Smith also explained the process of ballot ‘canvassing.’
“The canvassing is basically the way that we balance the election. So, we take the number of ballots that were tabulated, during early voting, absentee, and Election Day, and we balance all of the ballots. We know how many ballots were sent to each precinct. We know how many ballots we had here in the counting center. And we know how many we mailed. Then, we tabulate them. We just make sure that all of the votes count. We had a couple of absentee ballots that didn’t go through on Election Night, that they only had one poll worker signature. So, the canvassing board will have to make a determination if those ballots can count.”
In addition to the 7 provisional ballots, Smith stated that there are also approximately 21 additional absentee ballots that were received from city precincts on June 10ᵗʰ, postmarked by June 9ᵗʰ.
“Of course, everything that we already had was tabulated. On Wednesday, when we got the mail, included were 21 ballots for the city precincts. Those will be counted during the canvassing period.”
Canvassing will start on Monday, June 15ᵗʰ at 9:00 am.