A vote this close triggers an automatic recount.
And after recounting the fall election ballots on Nov. 25, the Licking County Board of Elections staff confirmed that the Newark Township proposal for an additional property tax of 1.5 mills for five years for construction and repair of streets, roads and bridges lost by two votes – 290 against and 288 for the levy.
“The recount went smoothly, and nothing changed at all,” said Tess Wigginton, elections board director.
That was the only Licking County recount following the Nov. 4 election. Anyone involved in the election could have requested a recount, but no one did, Wigginton said.
The next action by the elections board staff to conclude the Nov. 4 election will be an audit of a sample of the election results on Dec. 1.
“The secretary of state requires that we audit at least 5% of the results” to verify accuracy, Wigginton said.
To do that, she said, the board puts the names of several voting precincts in a hat, and board members pull the names of three locations from the hat. If two of the three make up 5%, they go with those. If they need more votes to get to 5%, they use all three.
The staff then takes out the ballots cast at those locations and counts them, which usually takes a couple of hours.
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“Typically when we do an audit, we look at a statewide and a countywide race or issue, and another of our choice,” she said. “This time, since there were no statewide issues or candidates, we will take the countywide ADAMH (Mental Health and Recovery for Licking and Knox Counties) levy and two countywide races, and for those we will look at the races for county municipal court judge and municipal clerk of courts,” Wigginton said.
She said that in her experience, and that of deputy director Brian Mead, the audits have never produced a change in results. “We’re expecting it to be spot-on this time, too,” she said.
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.