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Voters in Lansdowne got wrong ballots, Fayette clerk says. City council races swapped.



Voters in at least two precincts in Fayette County received the wrong paper ballots during Tuesday’s primary election, Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins Jr. confirmed.

In the Lansdowne Elementary polling place, which is where the Leawood and Cedar Run precincts vote, the ballots were swapped and the mistake was not caught for about four hours.

Danny Woolums of Lexington said he voted around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Cedar Run precinct. After his ballot was scanned in, he left. Then he realized that his ballot didn’t include a vote for the fourth district city council primary.

“I went back to make sure I hadn’t missed something,” Woolums said.

He and the election officer looked at the ballots on the table “and we recognized that both the Republican and Democrat ballots were missing the fourth district primary. Cedar Run is in the fourth district. Leawood is in the third.”

Voters cast their ballots during Kentucky’s Primary Election Day, Tuesday May 17, 2022 at the Fairway precinct in Lexington, Ky. Democrats and Republicans went go the polls to select candidates for the General Election in the fall.
Voters cast their ballots during Kentucky’s Primary Election Day, Tuesday May 17, 2022 at the Fairway precinct in Lexington, Ky. Democrats and Republicans went go the polls to select candidates for the General Election in the fall.

He had voted on a Leawood ballot. And so had the election officer and her husband. He said that the election officers didn’t know what to do; he’s hoping to hear from Blevins’ office in time to fix his vote.

“They were just as stunned as I was,” Woolums said. “This is a whole problem. ... My vote was wrong. This was not a problem before we had paper ballots.”

Fayette County switched to new machines which use paper ballots that are then scanned in. Human error accounted for the mix-up in the Lansdowne area.

Fourth District council candidate Brenda Monarrez said she contacted Blevins office to ask about the problem and was told it had been corrected.

But there could be a number of people who voted in the wrong district and once their ballot is scanned they can’t vote again, she was told.

Blevins said Tuesday afternoon that in the case of the fourth district council seat, there were 71 ballots cast before they caught the problem, so if the vote is within that margin for the bottom two candidates, he will initiate a recount and ask a judge to decide if the race was materially impacted and what should be done about it.

Assistant Secretary of State Jennifer Scutchfield said that if someone realized they had the wrong ballot before it was scanned, it could be spoiled and they could vote again. Once the paper ballot is scanned, there is no way to link it back to an individual voter.

She noted that it was up to the county clerk to train poll workers to recognize the e-poll book codes and up to voters to know which candidates their ballots should have listed.

“Once it’s counted, there’s no recourse and we can’t allow them to vote again because we don’t know that they got the wrong ballot,” Scutchfield said. Candidates who feel they might have been harmed in the process will have to talk to legal counsel.

A voter walks over to scan their ballot into a new type of voting machine, first used in Kentucky’s 2022 Primary Election, Tuesday, May 17, 2022 at the Fairway precinct in Lexington, Ky. The machines, called the InterCivic are made by the Hart company. It uses a paper ballot, first filled out by the voter, and then scanned into this machine, which is nearby the voting booth.

Fayette County voting complaints

More than a dozen complaints were called into Kentucky’s election law violation hotline Tuesday from Fayette County.

As of 7 p.m. Tuesday, 148 new complaints from across Kentucky had been received by the Attorney General’s voter fraud hotline.

According to Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s office, there were 33 complaints of electioneering statewide, nine of which came from Fayette County.

Blevins said the AG’s office contacted him about calls to the hot line involving Andrew Cooperrider, who is challenging Donald Douglas in the Republican primary for the 22nd District state Senate seat.

After receiving complaints about Cooperrider’s election workers bothering voters, Blevins said he initially told Cooperrider to move his people back from where they had set up 100 feet from the entrances. But in the afternoon, after Cooperrider’s attorney filed a lawsuit in federal court, an agreed order was entered to allow them up to 100-foot boundary.

Coding problems

Blevins also said that the electronic poll books, which serves as a record of registered voters in some counties were not correctly coded.

In Fayette County, poll books were supposed to be precinct specific. Election officers in Lexington caught the error and began checking each precinct but this apparently also happened in other counties as well, Blevins said. It’s not clear how many people may have been affected.

“The e-pollbooks were programmed by location and not by individual precinct, so there was a small chance when voting at a location with multiple precincts that the voter might get a ballot for a different precinct housed at that same location,” Blevins said in a statement. “We caught that early on, and fixed it. There should be a negligible impact.”

Other Kentucky voting complaints

Jefferson County, where Louisville is located, also had a dozen calls to the AG’s hot line as of noon Tuesday, including four complaints of campaign violations and three of electioneering.

See something funny? Here’s how to report irregularities at the polls in Kentucky

Complaints about voting began coming in last week. Kentucky held three days of early voting May 12-14 and 82 pre-Election Day complaints were received, according to updated numbers from Cameron’s office. Some calls apparently came from out of state.

Primary Day voting

In Fayette County, Tuesday’s ballot included primaries for the Sixth Congressional District seat held by U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, who is seeking a sixth term, as well as hotly contested statehouse primaries.

Here are the contested Central Kentucky legislative primaries to watch on Election Day

Non-partisan races on the ballot in Fayette County included judicial races, city council and the mayor’s race, where Mayor Linda Gorton is seeking a second term.

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Polls Tuesday were open until 6 p.m. local time.

Blevins said traditional turnout for primary days without a presidential or governor’s race on the ballot is about 27% in Fayette County.

“We really won’t know until the end of the day” how many people voted, Blevins said.

Voters cast their ballots during Kentucky’s Primary Election Day, Tuesday May 17, 2022 at the Fairway precinct in Lexington, Ky. Democrats and Republicans went go the polls to select candidates for the General Election in the fall.
Voters cast their ballots during Kentucky’s Primary Election Day, Tuesday May 17, 2022 at the Fairway precinct in Lexington, Ky. Democrats and Republicans went go the polls to select candidates for the General Election in the fall.

Turnout, early voting numbers

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael G. Adams said on Monday that his office expected turnout to be less than 20%.

“We hoped for greater participation, but the lack of a competitive statewide primary contest dampens enthusiasm,” Adams said on social media. “We are dialing back our prediction of 23% turnout to less than 20%.”

Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins said 19 percent of voters showed up overall. According to the Secretary of State’s office, just over 116,000 people voted early either through mail-in absentee ballots or in-person early voting.

An “I voted sticker” on a Kentucky voter after voters cast their ballots during Kentucky’s Primary Election Day, Tuesday May 17, 2022 at the Fairway precinct in Lexington, Ky. Democrats and Republicans went go the polls to select candidates for the General Election in the fall.
An “I voted sticker” on a Kentucky voter after voters cast their ballots during Kentucky’s Primary Election Day, Tuesday May 17, 2022 at the Fairway precinct in Lexington, Ky. Democrats and Republicans went go the polls to select candidates for the General Election in the fall.

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