As a result of a decision by the Holbrook City Council Tuesday evening to accept write-in votes containing misspelled names, Francie Payne is directly elected to the council. Candidates Tim Dixon and David Newlin will face off in the general election for the remaining council seat.
“If the intent of the voter is clear, then we shouldn’t deny them,” Councilman Richard Peterson said regarding the issue.
The council met Tuesday evening to canvass the election results and make a determination as required by state law as to whether votes received by write-in candidates that did not include the exact spelling used on the candidate’s filing papers would be counted as valid. Inclusion of the additional votes put Payne over the required fifty percent plus one to be elected outright in the primary election.
A total of 534 valid votes were cast in the March 10 election, requiring a candidate to receive 268 votes in order to be directly elected. Councilman Bobby Tyler, who was unopposed in his bid for mayor, was elected with 433 votes. Candidate C.J. Wischmann received 319 votes and earned the first of the three council seats up for election. Payne received 249 correctly spelled votes and 26 additional votes in which her name was misspelled. The council’s decision to accept the votes put her total at 275, above the minimum requirement for automatically obtaining a seat.
Council members also voted to accept misspellings and variations of the names of write-in candidates Tim Dixon and Earl Kester, although the acceptance did not alter the final outcome of the election. Dixon received a total of 143 correctly spelled votes as well as five with misspellings for a total of 148 votes. Kester received 112 votes with his name spelled correctly, and an additional 24 votes with misspellings or variations of his name, for a total of 136 votes.
Prior to accepting the votes, the council had a brief debate on whether all of the misspellings and variations represented the intent of the voters. Councilman Wade Carlisle noted that there were three variations of Payne’s name that gave him pause, such as one vote that only contained a last name.
“If we throw out those three, I can happily say that the rest of the votes look like who they wanted to vote for,” he said.
Councilmen Phil Cobb, Myron Maxwell and Tyler agreed.
Councilman Peterson remarked that he initially came to the same conclusion, but after further considering the council’s duty, as guided by state law, to consider the intent of the voter, he concluded that if the council can see the voter’s intent, the vote should be counted, no matter how badly misspelled.
“I think we can see their intent,” Peterson said. “I think we should count them all if that’s the basis we’re using to decide, intent.”
City Manager Ray Alley pointed out that phonetically the misspellings being considered all pointed to one of the valid write-in candidates.
Carlisle asked whether there were any other write-in votes that could have been potentially misconstrued for one of the write-in candidates, for example, a voter writing in Richard Nixon having a vote misconstrued for write-in candidate Dixon.
City Clerk Cher Reyes explained that there were 10 to 12 other names written on ballots that were not official write-in candidates, but none of them could have been mistaken for official write-in candidates.
Peterson noted that the council accepting or rejecting the three votes being questioned would not change the outcome of the election.
“It’s not going to change the results and I don’t think any spelling is going to change the intent of the voter,” he said.
Vice Mayor Charles Haussman remarked that in the purest sense of following the intention of the voters, the council should accept all of the votes containing misspellings or obvious variations of official write-in candidates.
Cobb moved to accept all of the votes and received a second from Peterson. The council unanimously approved the motion, making the election results official.
Following the meeting, candidate Earl Kester questioned the number of lines on the ballot available for write-in candidates, noting that there were three official write-in candidates and only two lines. Reyes explained that the ballots were required to be printed prior to the deadline for write-in filing and at that time there was only one write-in candidate on record. She noted that there was space for an additional candidate to be written in and such write-ins were accepted.
The May general election, which will decide the final council seat, will be held on Tuesday, May 19.
