Council results finally released  (KY)

Melissa Gagliardi    Louisville Courier-Journal    22 May 2008

Problems with some voting machines meant a later release of Bullitt County election results, but candidates had their figures in hand shortly after the polls closed.
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"The candidates knew their results before we knew the results," said County Clerk Kevin Mooney, adding that candidates often have supporters go precinct to precinct collecting results.

Among those celebrating early was Bonnie Enlow of Shepherdsville, who said she would have liked to have had final results sooner.

"It would be nice, instead of wondering," she said. "It took several hours before they had an official count. Not to have numbers after a long day of wondering, it does make the anxiety high."

In the race for Shepherdsville City Council, former Mayor Larry Hatfield took the most votes, followed by former Councilman Don Cundiff and incumbents Enlow, Margaret Moore, Stacey Dawson Cline and Tony Miller.

They and Republicans Alan Wetzel and Scott Ellis, who were unopposed, will compete in November's general election for the six council seats.

In Hillview, incumbent Kim Whitlock was the top vote-getter, followed by incumbents Jo-Ann Wick, Randall Hill and Jim Burton. Two newcomers, Harry Cooper and Timothy William Boggs, were next. All six will serve on the City Council as no Republicans filed to oppose them this fall.

Mooney said the delay in the tallying was mainly due to some newer machines for special-needs voters that had trouble reading memory cards. Those machines weren't used exclusively by special-needs voters, he said.

Plus, after elections in May 2006, a recount found an error in one precinct. Mooney said corrections had to be made and official reports had to be sent to the secretary of state something he didn't want to repeat.

So Tuesday night he encouraged election workers to take their time and double-check figures.

In addition, election results were not posted on the city clerk's Web site, www.bullittcountyclerk.com, until yesterday morning because workers forgot, Mooney said.

In a separate issue, Robert and Tina Graham of Hillview complained that they didn't get to vote in their local election, and Mooney said several other people had the same complaint.

Mooney said poll workers failed to give local-election ballots to voters in a few instances. But he said, as a security measure, once people vote, they can't go back and vote again, and it was after they cast their ballots that they noticed they hadn't voted in the local election.

"There's no do-over," he said, adding that even one voter missing an opportunity to vote is one too many. But he said, "Citizens have some degree of responsibility to tell the poll worker 'I'm a city voter, and I don't have a city ballot.' "

Mooney said voter turnout in the county was 29.2 percent, closely mirroring the statewide numbers.