After a recount, candidate goes from losing badly to winning easily in Clay County
After a voting machine error showed a Democratic Clay County Commission candidate losing badly in initial results, a recount has established that candidate as the likely winner to advance to November’s general election.
Jon Carpenter gathered nearly 55% of the vote for the Democratic Clay County Commission Western District primary after a lengthy recount on Thursday at the Clay County Board of Elections office. The final results will be certified later Friday, Clay County election officials said.
The recount was ordered after initial, unofficial vote tallies on Tuesday showed Carpenter receiving zero votes in 21 of the 40 precincts. Another precinct showed Carpenter receiving just one vote, an apparent anomaly given Carpenter’s stature in the Northland. He’s been elected four times as a Democratic House member in the Missouri General Assembly.
Tuesday’s initial results showed Clay County Assessor Cathy Rinehart winning with 73% of the vote.
Reached Wednesday, Rinehart acknowledged that something was amiss with the vote count.
Clay County election officials said they discovered a programming error on the tabulators that affected the results. The county’s vendor, Adkins Printing, was investigating.
The recount showed slight variances in vote totals in other races, but none as consequential as the apparent flipping of the Carpenter-Rinehart contest.
Carpenter, if the recount holds after the final vote is certified on Friday, will face Republican Lydia McEvoy in the general election. The winner of that race will replace Gene Owen on the three-member Clay County Commission. Owen, a Democrat, decided not to run for another term.
The Clay County counting kerfuffle wasn’t the only election mishap in Missouri on Tuesday.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on Wednesday that Iron County in eastern Missouri sent in an election return showing only 134 voters in a county of some 10,000 residents weighed in on a constitutional amendment to expand Medicaid. An election official told the newspaper she made a mistake and sent in the wrong figures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s office, which notified her of the obvious problem.
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 10:12 AM.
