Official minutes of the recount board – third meeting

OFFICIAL

MINUTES OF THE HD 37 RECOUNT BOARD

NOVEMBER 23, 2008 9:00 A.M.

LINN COUNTY ELECTIONS DEPOT

323 3^RD ST SW

CEDAR RAPIDS

 

At 9:00 a.m. on November 23, 2008, Joel Miller, Linn County Auditor, convened the Iowa House District 37 recount board. Board members present: Jeff Elgin, Joe Stutler and Nick Gloe.

Auditor’s Staff present: Carole Maher, Gordon Thompson (11:30am – 12:15pm), and Becky Shoop (3:30pm – 4:00pm)

Observer for Art Staed: Hannah Garden-Monheit of Des Moines; no observer for Renee Schulte.

Miller presented unofficial minutes of the recount board of November 22, 2008.

Motion by Elgin, seconded by Gloe to approve minutes of November 22, 2008 as printed.

VOTE: Elgin & Stutler & Gloe – Aye

Motion by Gloe to nominate Elgin as Chair. Motion failed for lack of a second.

Motion by Elgin, seconded by Stutler to nominate Gloe as Chair.

VOTE: Elgin & Stutler – Aye; Gloe – Abstained. 

 

 

The recount board agreed on the following steps:

 

 

 

 

Step 1

– Compare the tapes for all HD 37 precincts to numbers reported. Step 2

- Start with a couple small precincts, run ballots through machine and verify with election night tape and then hand count. Do a total of 4. Hand count as we feed? Yes, try it (might take 12 hrs). They will try to do 3 precincts on Monday. If satisfied, then open all totes and look at them Tuesday morning. Then precincts will be done. Step 3

– Start on Absentees (Tuesday afternoon?). They will use the same procedures that they do for counting the precincts. Compare hand count to machine count. At what point do they stop? Open all Absentee totes to review as we did for all other pcts.

Motion by Stutler, seconded by Elgin to recount precincts per the email sent by Stutler to the Board on 11/22/2008, i.e., 33, 26, 28, 27, 25, 32, 24, 29, 23, 31, and 30.

0910 – Created access control boundaries to limit observers

Discussion: What to do if difference between hand count and machine count? Agreed to redo if discrepancy and determine cause.

Discussion of stray marks versus voter intent. Board will make determination if machine undecided. Ballots reviewed at polling places by precinct election officials – none reviewed until today.

0935 – Board auditing tally envelopes starting with CR23.

1035 – Auditor Miller returned to Elections Depot with Absentee precinct tally sheet, chairs, red ink pens, and calculators.

Multiple speaker phone discussions with Deputy Tim Box and Deputy Sue Wold to resolve why two extra tapes for provisional ballots and one extra tape for absentee ballots. Provisional and absentee tapes created on 11/7/2008 were not closed out on 11/7/2008, but supplemented with votes that arrived in the Auditors Office by Noon on 11/10/2008 and then closed out. Board was satisfied with the explanation provided by Deputy Wold.

Ballot records from five precincts are questionable; however, those records do not take precedence over the tapes printed from the precinct voting machines.

1215 – Board recessed for lunch.

1305 – Board reconvened.

1314 – Auditor unsealed CR33 for Board to begin hand sorting (see recount form for chain of custody).

1425 – Gloe feeding CR33 ballots into optical scan machine as Stutler and Elgin are hand-counting ballots.

1434 – 1443 (9 minutes) Elapsed time to process 100 ballots through optical scan.

1444 – 1450 (6 minutes) Elapsed time to process 100 ballots through optical scan.

1538 – Machined rejected one ballot as ambiguous. Voter circled oval next to straight party Democrat and then apparently decided to fill in ovals for individual races. Board determined that filling-in the oval by the straight party Democrat would not change the voter’s votes, but would satisfy the machine and keep the count on election day matched to the recount board’s count.

1550 – Upon completion of the hand counting versus optical scanning of CR33, the hand-counters’ (Elgin and Stutler) count was one more than the machine count. The error was attributed to a double-count of one ballot that had been rejected by the machine and counted twice. The Board agreed not to recount the ballots.

CR33 ballot bag resealed with seal #637589.

1612 – Started recounting of CR26.

1830 – Concluded recount of CR26. Hand-count matched machine count. No discrepancies from Election Day. CR26 ballot bag resealed with seal #637599.

1852 – Without dissent, Chair indicated Board would recess and reconvene at 0930 on Monday, November 24, 2008.

Respectfully submitted, 

Joel D. Miller – Auditor

Approved by the Board at 1:25pm on November 24, 2008