Provisional, write-in ballots must be recounted by hand

The secretary of state had to break deadlocks on two elections board votes.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- If you're scoring at home, the total now is Andy Barkley: 1,140 votes; George Brown: 1,138.
For the third time -- but maybe not the last -- vote totals in the Warren 3rd Ward council race have changed. This time, Barkley gained one vote to extend his lead to two, but the results are still to be certified, and then an automatic recount will be held.
The Trumbull County Board of Elections met Tuesday after receiving word from the state that provisional and write-in ballots will be recounted by hand as the county's Republican Party chairman had asked. The result is that the elections board has today and Thursday to complete that recount before Thursday's deadline for certification.
The reason the Barkley-Brown race changed by one vote was because of two missing ballots the board of elections found last week.
On election night, Barkley went to bed thinking he was leading by a couple of votes, only to find out the next morning he trailed by 10. That happened because of confusion surrounding the county's new touch-screen voting system.
Lost and found
A couple of weeks after the election, the board counted the provisional ballots, and those gave Barkley a one-vote lead.
Craig Bonar, elections board member and Republican Party chairman, explained the two missing ballots -- one from the Barkley-Brown race and one from the Champion trustee race -- were found when workers looked again at races that were close enough for automatic recount.
By checking to see how many people voted in the 3rd Ward and in Champion, it became apparent a couple of ballots were missing, Bonar said. They were found when elections workers looked in the bags and boxes where ballots are kept, he said.
In the Champion race, the two ballots found made Bob Farmer's deficit behind Tom Tracey one vote closer. He now trails by six votes -- 1,010 to 1,004 -- instead of a seven-vote gap. That race also gets an automatic recount.
On Nov. 28, the elections board split 2-2 on whether to recount provisional ballots by hand. Democrats Nick Melfi and Sherron L. Platt said no to the recounts. Republicans Bonar and Nettie Ashelman voted for the recounts. Republican Brown trailed Democrat Barkley at the time by one vote.
What will happen
The result of Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's decision is that 4,000 absentee ballots and 602 provisional ballots, which were done on paper, will be counted again before the election can be certified. They will be read by an optical scanner, and the ballots that the scanner does not identify conclusively will be "kicked out" and checked by hand by elections board members.
Each "kicked out" ballot will be checked to determine the voter's intent. In some cases, voters who were supposed to fill in ovals on their ballots instead drew a line through it or an "X." Some partially erased their marks.
The board members agreed to meet 1 p.m. Thursday to decide any votes the pairs couldn't resolve and to certify the results.
Meanwhile, Trumbull County Treasurer Christ Michelakis, the county's Democratic Party chairman, said he thinks the election still may not be finalized even if the board gets through the certification and recount process.
"Everyone's going to question whether someone's trying to steal the election," he said after attending the elections board meeting. "On either side, there's grounds for a lawsuit."
Michelakis added that printing of tax bills for county residents is being held up; the amount of taxes people will pay can't be determined until results of money issues on the ballot are certified.
runyan@vindy.com