INDIAN RIVER COUNTY – Supervisor of Elections candidate Sandi Harpring is raising questions about how the folding of the absentee ballots could impact the race for elections chief. The candidate held a press conference Wednesday afternoon at the steps of the Indian River County Courthouse alleging either incompetence or intent by appointed Supervisor of Elections Leslie Swan.
“That’s totally preposterous,” Swan said later Wednesday afternoon of Harpring’s allegations.
Harpring has suggested that the absentee ballots were laid out in a way that puts the fold – and therefore a crease – through Swan’s voting line, which could be picked up by the optical scanning machines.
Harpring said such a fold could impact the number of “votes” counted for the Supervisor of Elections race, explaining that if a voter did not cast a vote for the seat, the machine might interpret the crease as the vote. If the voter voted instead for her, Harpring said, the machine could pick up both the crease and the actual vote and discount it as a double-vote.
“The ultimate victim here is the voter,” Harpring said, explaining that they are at risk of not having their actual vote counted.
Swan said that she ran five folded ballots representing the Republican, Democrat, and No Party Affiliation absentee ballots through the scanning machines and all of them came back with undervotes for each race – meaning no votes were cast.
Swan said if the creases were an issue, the machines would have picked them up as votes, but they didn’t.
Harpring is recommending at the least that the county’s canvassing board perform a manual count for the Supervisor of Elections race, which would override what the machines count.
Swan said that any ballots that are flagged as having over-votes are automatically checked by the canvassing board, so there would be no question of what the vote for the race would be.
Harpring is also encouraging those who received absentee ballots to return them to the Supervisor of Elections Office and instead vote either during the early voting period or on Aug. 14.
Her campaign manager, Jim Harpring, said that there have been cases elsewhere when ballots that had been folded through a candidate’s name affected the outcome.
He pointed to a Palm Beach County case from 2008 as an example.
“History tells us it could be read as a vote,” Harpring said of a crease line, later adding, “They’re machines and they’re very sensitive.”
Voters are encouraged to connect the two ends of the candidate’s arrow with a thick, dark line. But Harpring said the machine doesn’t discern between a faint line or a thick one. If it picks up both, it’s counted as an over-vote and rejected.
He said they called the Supervisor of Elections Office on Tuesday and were directed to Swan, but she had not returned their call.
“We would hope the Supervisor of Elections would have some response,” Harpring said.
Swan said after the press conference that she never received a message that Harpring had called.
Harpring said they did not want to wait to bring the information to the public because the absentee ballots are already out to voters.
“It’s ridiculous what she’s claiming,” Swan said of Harpring, calling the move “political.”