Barton County’s primary election vote totals are official. Tuesday morning, a board of canvassers met in Barton County Clerk Bev Schmeidler’s office to certify the election.
They counted an additional 28 provisional ballots. Six other provisional ballots were rejected.
Schmeidler explained that anyone who attempted to vote but was not properly registered could use a provisional ballot. The most common problem was that the voter had moved to a different address within the county. The next most common issue would be someone was not registered. In one case, someone attempted to vote in the wrong party primary; this was only an election for Republican and Democrat primaries.
"The unaffiliated voters were allowed to declare a party and vote that party ballot in the Primary Election this August 6th," Schmeidler said. "We actually had numerous voters do exactly that. Unaffiliated voters could declare a party; however, a voter affiliated with a party could not change parties at the time of voting."
Schmeidler and Barton County Voter Registration Clerk Darin DeWitt said the Aug. 6 election went smoothly.
Schmeidler described it as “one of the smoothest elections.”
DeWitt agreed that problems that came up were “just simple little things.”
When there were voter registration problems, DeWitt said the office tried to contact the voter. If the issue was something as simple as coming in and providing a signature, it might be possible to reconcile it. “We try to give the benefit of the doubt to everybody,” he said.
The voting equipment also counts write-in votes but those were minimal, Schmeidler said. A few Democrats wrote in votes for candidates in the Republican primary, but those were not counted in the Republican races.
Schmeidler said she was disappointed in the poor voter turnout, which was 20% countywide.
As an elected official, Schmeidler was also a candidate. This year she faced a primary opponent, Alicia Straub.
“Because I was on the ballot, I tried to stay out,” Schmeidler said of Tuesday’s tabulations. A sign in the clerk’s office warned those who came to the courthouse to vote that they were not to discuss politics there, and the clerk said she was careful not to give any appearance that she was interfering in voting or counting votes.
“I did not help a single voter; I did not touch a ballot,” she said.
Before the votes could be canvassed, the county had to audit randomly selected races in randomly selected precincts chosen by the Secretary of State’s Office and have the election cleared by that office. “We came out spot-on,” Schmeidler said of the audits.
The Barton County Commissioners typically sit as the board of canvassers but two commissioners could not make it to the 8:30 a.m. meeting. (All five commissioners did attend the regular commission meeting that started at 9 a.m.) Sitting in for Barb Esfeld was Mary Jane Felke from the county clerk’s office and sitting in for Shawn Hutchinson was County Administrator Matt Patzner.
This story was updated on Aug. 15 to correct information about unaffiliated voters being able to declare a party at the primary election.
