Question: Who won the Caledonia mayor’s race?
Answer: We don’t know.
Question: When will we know?
Answer: When you see white smoke coming out of the chimney at Town Hall. It may take a while.
Today at noon, election commissioner Ken Byars will count the votes from Tuesday’s municipal election for the fourth time.
And even that may not decide which of the two candidates — incumbent Bill Lawrence or challenger Mitch Wiggins — will assume the mayor’s duty when the town’s board of aldermen hold their next meeting on July 6.
A summary of the events since the polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday:
Shortly after the polls closed, election commissioner Ken Byars began the count, reading the choices for mayor and aldermen from each ballot, with three ladies recording the votes.
Before beginning that count, Byars announced that 319 votes were cast Tuesday with 24 more absentee ballots to be counted immediately after those 319 ballots were counted. There were another eight affidavit votes which would either be validated or rejected on Wednesday morning, which is customary.
The first indication of problems came early on Tuesday. There were repeated delays, with the ladies recording the votes asking Byars to slow down or repeat himself throughout the process. It seemed as though almost ever ballot reading came with a delay of some sort.
How slow was the process? It took almost five hours for Tuesday’s count, far longer than anyone who had gathered to watch the proceedings could ever remember. That did not exactly inspire confidence of the 30 or so people who stuck around the hear the results.
Finally, at 11:45 p.m., the count had ended and Byars announced that Lawrence held a 172-170 lead, which meant that any valid affidavits votes could confirm or alter the outcome. Byars announced that when the commission met to consider those affidavit ballots, they would also recount the vote, which all parties agreed was a really, really, really good idea.
The first recount, according to Byars, was a 171-171 tie. On the next recount, Lawrence led 172-171.
Three counts. Three different outcomes. I suspect the Russians.
But it gets even more confusing than that. Tuesday night, during the initial count, Byars said two of the 343 total ballots listed no choice for mayor. Another ballot had a write-in candidate. That means there were 340 ballots cast Tuesday for the two candidates, which is odd since the tally showed 342 total votes (172 for Lawrence and 170 for Wiggins). It didn’t add up. You simply cannot have more votes than ballots.
Of the eight affidavit votes considered Wednesday morning, only two were ruled to be valid. Each candidate got one affidavit vote, which appears to have pushed the total number of valid votes to 342. The 171-171 count at least matched the number of ballots.
Since the first recount confirmed the results of the alderman’s races, the election commission conducted a second recount later Wednesday, counting only the votes for mayor. If we can assume that there were actually 342 valid ballots containing votes for mayor, the results of the second recount sheds no clarity on the matter, either, since the two candidates combined for 343 votes.
So they’re back at work today, trying to figure out who won.
It’s anybody’s guess — literally, it’s anybody’s guess — as to how those numbers will turn out this time.
My suggestion is they should just give up on counting the votes, take both candidates down to Ola J. Pickett Park and see which one of ’em can pull a sword from a stone.
At this point, only one thing is assured. No matter the ultimate result, the people of Caledonia will never be absolutely certain of its accuracy, and that’s a sure way to cast an undeserved cloud over the next administration.
I started to say you can count on that …
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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