UPDATE: From comments below:
Libertarian Candidate Melinda Bradley Mitchell came close enough in her campaign for Newburgh Town Council that she MAY have actually won. The vote totals on Tuesday were only 6 votes apart, 310 to 304! They’d like a recount. To do that, they need whatever money you can send as fast as possible. (Newburgh is just outside of Evansville, IN along the river)
Message from Bart Gadau in relation to this:
“Everyone, we need your help immediately! In Tuesday nights election, Melinda Bradley Mitchell fell just shy (6 votes) of winning her race for Newburgh Town Council. Melinda has decided to request a recount to ensure all absentee, provisional, etc. ballots were counted. Bad news is this is a very costly challenge. The filing is $2000 itself, plus there are some attorney and other fees she would have to pay. We really need for everyone to donate whatever they can spare to help Melinda out. She did an amazing job with her race this year, and this is our chance to help support as well as the party. Please let me know what you can give, we only have a little over a week to raise the money. Thanks!”
If you are interested in helping out, message Bart, give him a call (812) 305-0842 or simply put your check in the mail! Please make your check out to ‘Friends to Elect Melinda Mitchell’ and mail to Bart Gadau, 7919 Lanyard Drive, Evansville, IN 47715
Excellent news!
A message from the LPIN Chair, Joe Hauptmann: (paraphrased)
THANK YOU! We have met our goal and raised the $3100 that Melinda Bradley Mitchell needed to go forward with her recount. We are ending this directed fundraising drive and our donation page will be reset to accept regular contributions starting Monday.
Updates will continue to be posted when the actual petition is filed to keep everyone updated on developments. Again thank you all for a great effort.
A comment on the update thread pingback’d above says the $3100 goal has been met.
Thanks for the update. We got it posted at LP.org. I’m trying to get the LP main page on FB to post it also.
Update to the update!
After the candidate and State Chair met with the attorney a correction to the funds needed has been provided. The filing fee for a recount with less than 10 precincts is $100.00. There are four precincts in this town council election.
The total funding needed to file for a recount (deadline is Noon, Tuesday, Nov. 17th) is $3,100. That amount includes $3k for the atty plus the $100 for filing.
Current fundraising efforts are short by $180.00. Most sincere thanks to everyone that has already donated. Additional donations to meet this goal would be greatly appreciated.
Paulie said: “By the way, not that it matters to me but is it Joe F, John T or Jeremiah F? Maybe make up your mind?”
Hmmm, interesting. Thanks Paulie.
Yes WTF, there is an update! The recount process is moving forward very well. Karl Tatgenhorst, the LPIN Vice-Chair recently posted the following:
Good evening friends in Liberty!
I want to thank everyone for their help on Melinda’s recount fundraiser, we are doing so great!! I also want to beseech you for one last wee-little sprint. If TEN of you will send us $20…we will be done. Then Joe Hauptmann could spend tomorrow writing a press release which he could issue Monday stating that we have met our goal and are providing Melinda with the requested Attorney’s fees.
Here is what that does for us in the public eye:
The R/Ds paint us as “disorganized, unable to raise money, wasted votes and even unwilling to participate in the system” these are things they have helped voters to think.
Last week Beth Duensing and Bart Gadau started sharing Melinda’s plea and I started making calls. This was a plea for money, organized in a party effort which included our chair meeting with the prospective attorney so that we could participate in a crucial part of the system (election oversight) which is freely available to the republicrats. We took this effort to protect our confidence in the votes and insure that the public knew, we take their support serious enough.
This would not be necessary if we were allowed watchers.
We show with a Monday press release that we are a SERIOUS force to be reckoned with and we are “organized, competent in raising and managing funds, as safe a vote as any other party and aware of the system and how to work within it to overcome the obstacles they place in our path”
Please, we just need TEN people to send us $20. Will you?
Also, thanks for continuing to comment on the story and helping it gain more views by virtue of having recent comments. Our recent comments section is one of the top ways people find IPR articles 🙂
By the way, not that it matters to me but is it Joe F, John T or Jeremiah F? Maybe make up your mind?
You sound like you have some kind of interest in this. Did you see the links from Beth above?
Recount might take as long as 60 seconds. That’s about $33 per second. Not a good use of funds.
Does anyone else reading have information to the contrary?
Someone who talked to the clerk
By?
I am told there are no paper ballots. All votes were electronic touchscreen. If that’s true there’s nothing to recount. So what’s the point?
Any updates?
National has already been informed Sam. Her opponent was appointed by the council to serve as mayor. If she wins the recount she will take his council seat, but they will have to elect a new mayor.
You should probably let them know directly, in case they don’t see these comments.
National post needs to be corrected: “LPIN mayoral candidate, only six votes behind, considering a recount” since she was running for the town council, not Mayor.
As State Chair I want to assure any donors that these funds will not be used for general party purposes. With the exception of the credit card processing fee, all funds are going to the recount. In the unlikely event that extra funds are raised, they will be segregated and used only for Ballot Defense.
Thanks Paulie! And, thank you everyone that is donating.
The funding has very near reached an amount to cover the immediate needs of a re-count filing fee. Please don’t let that stop you from being part of this project by sending a few dollars as there will also be legal fees!
Article updated with this info and linked at http://www.lp.org/blogs/staff/lpin-mayoral-candidate-only-six-votes-behind-considering-a-recount
I would expect the recount to include all the votes, not just absentee. Based upon the counties past history (see links I posted in a comment above) there is every reason to suspect errors.
If there are only 24 absentee votes it seems hard to think that you’ll find the 6 or 7 you need. Do you think there are more absentees than are being reflected in the totals?
Thank you very much to everyone that has already donated to help fund this recount! Getting support from across the country is amazing. The funding is well on it’s way to meeting their goal by the end of this week.
If you are able, please send a few dollars to help fund this recount, even small amounts add up quickly. https://lpin.org/join/donate/
“I believe the fee is high to avoid having to recount every election. ”
I believe most states handle that by providing that the margin has to below a certain % for the candidate avoid paying the costs of the recount, sometimes with an intermediate bracket (e.g. more than 1% but less than 3%) where there’s a more moderate financial disincentive such as partial costs or a fixed fee.
In Indiana, at least in my county and I would assume statewide, we have early voting in different locations across the county. These early voters are handled as ‘absentee’. When I asked why I had to fill out an absentee form I was told it was because early voters are not casting their vote in their own polling place but may vote at any location across the county. This early voting seemed to be available for more than a week making it hard to believe that there were only 24 early voters.
Donations thankfully are coming in, so hopefully Melinda will get enough funding together to pay the $2000.00 filing fee. I believe the fee is high to avoid having to recount every election. Ohio I heard does automatically recount very close totals. Maybe someday IN will follow suit.
Thanks Paulie for asking the LP to post.
I’ve recommended promoting this via the main LP FB page and LP.org blog. We’ll see if they take me up on it.
Absentee ballots tend to be cast by more motivated and more highly informed voters (and, same thing, as a lower % turnout of those eligible to cast them), compared to average in-person voters; because of the somewhat greater hassle you have to go through to get and cast one. That’s a group the tends to have a higher proportion of third-party voters, ceteris paribus. So there’s a decent reason to think that, in a 50-50 recount, absentee ballots might skew towards the Libertarian. Likewise provisional ballots, if the Libertarian manages to turn out a larger number of previous non-voters.
There are other reasons it could maybe cut the other way, but those are two at-least-plausible rationales for a Libertarian to pursue a recount.
The rationale is that spammers often have multiple links per comment. But limiting it to just one seems excessive to me. When I was an admin here I could adjust that setting up or down as necessary, but I can’t do that anymore.
Ah, thanks Paulie. I didn’t realize it was the links that were a problem. I’ll try to remember to post just one link per comment when necessary.
No worries. Just break up the links into separate comments, or let it sit till someone approves it.
More than one link per comment gets flagged for moderation. Write [email protected] if you would like that setting relaxed.
What ever I am doing wrong that causes that moderator issue is causing double posts. Sorry-
There is reason to believe that the vote totals are incorrect.
Failure to count more than 370 absentee ballots cast in Warrick County in the 2012 general election:
http://www.courierpress.com/business/microvote-human-error-caused-warrick-county-ballot-count-failure-ep-504660848-324531121.html
Still working toward accurate vote counting for the 2014 primary:
http://www.govtech.com/local/Warrick-Officials-Look-at-Archaic-Methods-to-Count-Every-Vote.html
Question to moderator: Why do my comments still need moderator approval? I thought verifying my e-mail took care of that?
There is reason to believe that the vote totals are incorrect.
Failure to count more than 370 absentee ballots cast in Warrick County in the 2012 general election:
http://www.courierpress.com/business/microvote-human-error-caused-warrick-county-ballot-count-failure-ep-504660848-324531121.html
Still working toward accurate vote counting for the 2014 primary:
http://www.govtech.com/local/Warrick-Officials-Look-at-Archaic-Methods-to-Count-Every-Vote.html
In a lot of states, a recount would be automatic on a result that close, or at the very least free if requested.
I don’t know how likely this recount would be to prevail, and if isn’t likely then I agree it’s not worth that cost. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong, per se, with requesting a recount simply because the margin was razor-thin. Republicans and Democrats certainly do exactly that, and election laws tend to presume that’s the main situation where a recount is justified; not necessarily because there’s any suspicion of fraud or misconduct. Recounting fewer than 1,000 votes should take a few hours at most, and be a trivial expense. It’s not like we’re talking about imposing any kind of significant burden on the state or taxpayers, and that they charge four figures for it is absurd.
Unless you have specific reasons to believe potential fraud and that a recount done under better controls might make a difference.. asking for recounts just to hope to win the statistical anomole lottery is not cool.
Yeah it sucks to run a campaign and lose by a fee votes. Be mature about it.
“Rest are electronic.”
The link you provided doesn’t specify that, it just says “machine”. Indiana uses both paperless electronic touchscreen machines, and optical scan paper ballot machines. Could be the latter in this case, I don’t know.
I am curious what the recount procedure is like, if there is no paper trail on the non-absentee ballots cast. Also, how the state can possibly justify charging so much to recount a few hundred ballots, particularly on such a close result (<0.01% margin), but that's a different rant.
Donations may easily be made online via the LPIN website! Only 6 errors in the vote count need to be found! Thank you in advance for your help and support. https://lpin.org/join/donate/
Donations may now be made easily online via the LPIN!
Small donations add up quickly. Thank you in advance for your support.
https://lpin.org/join/donate/
From the article:
“Message Bart” is most likely a reference to facebook, since that’s where we found this, so look for him there. If you aren’t on FB write a check or give him a call.
Warrick County Clerk Election Results
http://96.27.225.50/depatments/election/poll_results/2015%20Fall/WarrickElecSumm%20.htm
Looked at County website. 24 absentee ballots. No provisionals. Rest are electronic. How does recount win?
so how do we help? no donation site?