The Enquirer > Clermont Vote > Count error brings apology

A top Clermont County elections official Thursday apologized for a vote-reporting error that made Tuesday’s Republican primary seem much closer than it was. “We made a mistake and we’re sorry it happened,” said Kathy Jones, deputy director of the Clermont County Board of Elections. Elections officials in six of the 2nd Congressional District’s seven counties were required to report their results to the elections board in Hamilton County, the largest county in the district. The elections boards were asked to report when they reached 25 percent, 50 percent, 75, percent and 100 percent of their counts. By about 10 p.m., Hamilton County officials thought they had 100 percent reports from all seven counties and the total showed Jean Schmidt defeating Bob McEwen by 705 votes. But a worker at the Clermont County Board of Elections mistakenly wrote the word “final” on a sheet of results that really represented 75 percent of the vote and it was then faxed to the Hamilton County board, Jones said. Jones said she discovered the mistake early Wednesday morning and immediately faxed the real sheet of final results to the Hamilton County Board of Elections. The corrected version increased Schmidt’s lead to 2,667 votes.


Now if I had a clerk at one of the stores that I used to manage come to me with a weird story about suddenly finding all this extra money, I would make it a point to go back and review their past activities looking for any irregularities in the register tapes, cameras and counts. And if I found things out that seemed strange, and I wasn’t satisfied with the explanation, I would fire them. But in that case we’re talking about fifty or sixty dollars… something that really matters. Not a silly primary vote. Who cares about that?

For you not so distant history buffs, a lot of bizarre stuff was witnessed at the Clermont County Board of Elections back in the 2004 general. Interestingly enough Kathy Jones’s name came up back then too:

In a sworn affidavit, Clinton County Democrat Stephen Spraley, a retired plumber from Springboro, Ohio, saw the stickers on at least ten opti-scan ballots. Spraley brought this issue to the attention of Deputy Director for the Clermont Board of Elections, Kathy Jones, who is a Democrat. He says he was rebuffed by the Republican Director of the Board of Elections Daniel Bare.

“I had asked Kathy Jones – where did these stickers come from and who put them on the ballots?” Spraley said. “She was interrupted by Dan Bare, and he told me that the board would have another meeting and that is where questions about ballots would be determined.” (link)


Now before you discount what these people have said, remember that if it is proven that they were lying, that would be perjury. Of course, you’d have to investigate something like that in order to prove it, and we can’t be wasting our money on nonsense like voting… we need to hold onto it so that we can invest it ;-)

I must say… at least one thing has improved: back then they didn’t even bother to explain themselves let alone apologize.