Provisional ballot prevents coin flip in JP Dist. 10 race

Stegall joins Owens in June 21 runoff

A provisional ballot prevented a pair of Justice of the Peace candidates from having to flip a coin to decide who would be in a runoff.

Meeting on Thursday to decide the runoff candidate in the St. Francis County Quorum Court’s JP District 10 race, commissioners opened the provisional ballot that had been cast but not counted in Tuesday’s primary due to the voter not showing identification when the ballot was cast. The identification was delivered to the county clerk’s office this week, which allowed the commission to count the ballot.

During the primary, Kendall Owens received 48 votes. His opponents, Victor Stegall and Arthur Witherspoon received 30 each.

According to SFC Election Commission Chairman Chris Oswalt, although identification can be delivered to the clerk until Monday, May 30, there is a “hard deadline” for runoff elections.

"There were a few absentee ballots that were not counted during the election because the voters did not provide I.D.," said Oswalt. "State law allows people to come and give their I.D. to the clerk’s office up until Monday, May 30. We have not gotten to that deadline yet, but because we are at a hard deadline with trying to determine who is going to make the runoff, we are going to open this Ward 2 ballot."

Oswalt told commissioners he remembered seeing a Ward 2 ballot that was unable to be counted.

"After seeing that we had two candidates in the JP Position 10 race who both got 30 votes, we thought we were going to have to flip a coin or something like that to decide the candidate that would take the other runoff position against Kendall," said Oswalt. "I remembered that we had a Ward 2 ballot that was not counted because they did not provide I.D., but they still had time to bring one. We went into our election office and checked the ballots that did not provide I.D. and sure enough we found a Ward 2 ballot."

Oswalt and other commissioners determined the ballot eligible for counting in the unofficial total for the election.

"We contacted the family member of that voter and they did provide an I.D., for this voter so that this vote could be counted," said Oswalt. "It is possible that this vote could be for Mr. Owens, and if that is the case, we will have to continue forward with our choosing of a candidate to run against him in the runoff."

After opening the ballot, verifying the I.D. of the person and the ballot, commissioners

(Continued from Page 1) said the vote had been cast for Stegall. This vote changes the unofficial total for this race to 31 votes for Stegall and 30 for Witherspoon.

The JP District 10 race was one of the races in which a ballot error was discovered in that the race had not been placed on all of the necessary ballots. Commissioners said they attempted to contact each voter in the affected precincts who had already voted in early voting in an effort to encourage them to return to the courthouse to cast a paper ballot in the omitted races.

The problem impacted about 100 people who voted early and about 40 absentee ballots, commissioners said.

According to Oswalt, the runoff, set for Tuesday, June 21, will only include the JP 10 race.