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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

Confusion during District 29 recount was cleared up when resolution ballots included; result matched election outcome

Under questioning from Sen. Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, Chief Deputy Secretary of State Tim Hurst, who was present at the recount of ballots in District 29, said, “There was some confusion when the recount was done, because the numbers were different from the contest. And then it was pointed out that there were resolution ballots that had not been run yet.”

Resolution ballots are those that are processed by the tabulator, but rejected because they can’t be read because the mark is too light or a similar concern. “The machine stops, it’s given to a resolution board, who then looks at it,” Hurst said. “They make a duplicate ballot, and those are run at the end of the day. And then those results are added into the precinct results.”

“When we did the precinct results on the recount, they did not run the resolution ballots at the time,” Hurst said. Then, he said, “They ran those, and that accounted for the difference. … I don’t remember if it was exactly the same, it was not more than one or two votes.”



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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