It could be another week before a decision is made on how to determine the winner of the Hopkinsville City Council Ward 7 Republican Primary after Circuit Judge John Atkins said Tuesday he wants to hear from a representative of the election software company.
Doug Wilcox defeated Mark Graham by one vote in the primary, which consists of two full precincts and part of a third. At issue is the fact that 109 people voted in the primary who were not residents of Ward 7. The vote totals from the G-104 precinct favored Graham over Wilcox 98-47.
However, Christian County Clerk Mike Kem said there were only 36 people who cast valid votes in that precinct. During Tuesday’s hearing in circuit court, Kem verified to John Adams, the attorney for Wilcox, that the vote count in the two precincts that did not have any reported irregularities was 138 to 86 in favor of Wilcox. Adams has maintained the 36 valid votes cast in the G-104 precinct would not be enough to overcome the 52-vote margin in the other two precincts.
Graham’s attorney, Ben Fletcher, asked Kem if he or anyone in his office had checked the other two precincts to make sure no one had improperly voted as was the case in G-104. Kem replied everyone in those two precincts was eligible to vote in the Ward 7 race, unlike G-104 which is a split precinct on the ward map.
click to download audioFletcher followed up by asking how easy it would be to verify the voters in those two precincts.
click to download audioFletcher was hoping to question a representative of Tenex Election Software, who has the state contract to provide election services to Kentucky and several other states. He is wanting them to verify the vote count of all eligible voters and attest to an exact count before determining the next course of action for Graham.
Judge Atkins agrees that having a representative from Tenex can help expedite the process.
click to download audioJudge Atkins set another hearing for next Tuesday at noon in hopes Tenex will provide a representative to testify.
Kentucky entered into a $2.9 million contract with Tenex in 2018 to provide the Kentucky Board of Elections with a secure, modern electronic poll book system to replace the existing paper-based roster system and voting process.
However, a Google search of Florida-based Tenex Solutions shows multiple election issues dating back at least seven years. In March 2020, the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office reported a glitch in reporting results for the second election in a row. An election official said local results were counted accurately by her office, but the information was garbled when election workers tried to upload it to the state-run voter information interface.
In November 2020, Williamson County Texas officials reported early voting results could not be separated by voting precinct because of a Tenex programming issue. Tenex said the poll books were providing correct information for ballot styles but weren’t attaching the precinct associations.
In the 2015 general election, the Ohio Secretary of State told boards of elections to embargo each county’s election results for three hours because glitches in Tenex’s electronic polling books caused long delays.
