By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
Nila Keyte, Mona Town Recorder, was asked to investigate
some allegations made to the Times-News via e-mail alleging
city elections were not fairly conducted.
A resident accused the city of not conducting the
elections properly in that some votes were not counted
because of a misunderstanding of the law, that a person who
was running for office was campaigning at the voting site,
and that a candidate being in the office while the vote was
tallied.
All allegations were wrongly levied, with the exception
of one, which is currently being investigated by Keyte.
"When there was a write-in candidate, we required that
the name not just be written in but that there also be a
check in the box to the side of the name," said Keyte.
In the past, there has been some confusion when write-in
candidates have officially entered the race. One of those
has been that the voter would sometimes write in a name and
then would put a check in the box to the side of a name
already printed on the ballot.
As votes were counted, in those elections, it seemed that
the person casting the ballot thought they were to write in
the names of those running as write-in candidates even
though the voter did not cast a vote for the write-in
candidate.
As for a candidate hanging about the precinct site, said
Darlene Fowkes, who was the candidate in question, she had
not been there to campaign.
"I was a satellite registration agent and was called to
come to the polling place several times to check
registrations," said Fowkes.
When a person did not appear on the check list posted at
the voting site, then Fowkes had to visit and find out what
the problem might be.
No one wanted the registration job, so she had agreed to
do it. As part of the job, Fowkes said, she is to work out
problems.
"The ballot-counting process is open to the public, and
anyone can attend," said Keyte.
No one in the city is prohibited by law from attending.
However, Fowkes had been a help. She had assisted Lila
Stanley in taking the ballots from the box.
They did not count the votes, which was carefully done,
said Keyte. She and other voting judges counted the votes as
they were read off. They were careful that the three vote
counters matched numbers. If any one was off on the count,
the three started over.
Keyte said she would accept the assignment, made by the
council, to find out if the write-in candidate vote was fine
as it was done&emdash;counting a vote for a candidate only
if the name written in had a check mark by the name in the
voting area of the ballot.
Several sources of information Keyte had checked gave
conflicting reports, she said. Utah Code seemed to say that
the "intent" of the voter should be paramount.
If it appeared the voter's "intent" was to vote for the
candidate the voter had written-in, then that vote should be
counted. The Utah Code seemed to indicate that all write-in
names should be accepted as a vote.
However, other legal sources did not agree on the
application.
Keyte will contact the city attorney and give him time to
determine whether the vote was counted as it should have
been.
"There is only one case where the vote might matter,"
said Keyte. All other candidates won by enough majority that
the 10 or so votes that would be affected would not matter
one way or the other.
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