In this year’s relatively tight gubernatorial election, Daviess County voters were about as divided as voters across the rest of the state. As announced Thursday morning after an official recanvass took place, Deputy County Clerk Richard House said that the re-counted votes matched the number of official votes counted after the election, meaning no major discrepancies were found.
At the end of the recanvass, it was determined that Bevin led Daviess County in numbers with 17,232 votes while Beshear’s numbers came in at 16,015, the same results as the day of the election.
Official statewide voting results from the Nov. 5 election showed Gov. Matt Bevin trailied Democrat candidate and Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear by around 5,000 votes. Bevin requested a recanvass of those votes, citing “irregularities” that he believed occurred at the polls and during the voting process. After the recanvass didn’t show enough change in the election results, Bevin conceded the race to Beshear Thursday afternoon.
According to House, those alleged irregularities don’t hold much merit.
“Every reelection has problems because humans run the election,” House said. “We have polling places that have slight things, but we had no major issues. We did have a precinct that didn’t open on time, so that’s our biggest issue, and we’ve addressed that.”
A precinct in Saint Joseph didn’t open until 6:30 a.m. because a poll worker overslept and wasn’t able to set up the voting booths. House called sleeping in on election day “the ultimate mistake” and said a clerk from Sorgho was called to take over and set everything up last minute. Some voters left after discovering their precinct wasn’t open, but many stayed in line to vote, House said.
“We told them help was on the way and many stayed,” he said. “We didn’t get the call about it until 5:43 a.m.”
The only other minor issue Daviess County incurred was a write-in vote that had Beshear’s name on it. As House mentioned at Thursday’s recanvass, write-ins cannot include candidates’ names on them, and that vote was excluded from the official vote count before the recanvass began.
Those instances, along with the rest of the day’s general ups and downs, will be compiled into a report that will be critiqued by the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office, House said.
“We report it all to them to see if there’s anything they want to take a deeper look at,” House said. “We testify under oath and everything.”
Aside from small issues that occur each election, House said he’s not convinced that any voter fraud occurred during this gubernatorial race.
“Every reelection has problems because humans run the election,” House said. “We have polling places that have slight things, but we had no major issues. We did have a precinct that didn’t open on time, so that’s our biggest issue, and we’ve addressed that.”
Although no discrepancies were found during Thursday’s recanvass, a trend was apparent in city and county voting.
The record-setting voter turnout for the gubernatorial race in Daviess County ended up at around 45 percent, with equal numbers of city and county voters turning up at the polls. But House said there’s been a trend in recent years of County voters leaning Republican and City voters leaning Democrat in elections.
County precincts saw 9,627 people vote for Bevin and 7,046 vote for Beshear. City precincts saw 7,605 people vote for Bevin and 8,969 vote for Beshear.
House said it’s possible that social issues –namely, Bevin’s pro-life campaign — played a big role in county residents voting republican. It’s also possible that county voters have become more conservative over a variety of social issues in recent years, which may have led to a change in voting patterns.
County voters also don’t come into contact with politicians as often as city voters do, House said.
“You can get more contact with people in the city because you can go door-to-door,” House said. “You just can’t do that in the county — the houses are too spread out.”
