The Christian County Board of Elections presented a list of recommendations to the current session of the Christian County grand jury stemming from the May primary election.
The main crux of the report regarded the Ward 7 Hopkinsville City Council primary. Doug Wilcox defeated Mark Graham by one vote. This came after Christian County Clerk Mike Kem reported 109 ineligible voters had cast votes for Ward 7 constituents in a split precinct — which prompted Graham to petition for a recount, and Wilcox to file a motion of dismissal through Attorney John Adams.
On June 14, Judge John Atkins ruled in favor of Wilcox, stating the 36 eligible voters would not have overcome Wilcox’s 52-vote lead in the precincts that weren’t split.
Florida-based Tenex Software has the state contract to manage elections in Kentucky. The board of elections said a data download error by Tenex assigned all voters in precinct G104 to Ward 7 even though most of the voters lived in Ward 8.
County Clerk Mike Kem said once his office was notified of the error, he contacted Tenex who pushed the proper data to the electronic rosters.
The board of elections had no comment or recommendations for Tenex in their handling of the local election.
They did however say in its report that voters seemed to be unaware of the voting locations for the primary election. The 2022 primary locations were the same ones used in the 2020 November general election with the exception of one added at South Christian Elementary School.
The board of elections said the public needed to be notified sooner of voting locations and suggested asking non-profit groups to share election information. They also said a better job needed to be done of educating the public on options for casting ballots such as mail-in, early voting, and day of election voting.
The report also said larger signage was needed at locations previously used for elections informing them of the new voting centers. And they suggested contacting Frankfort and asking lawmakers to increase the number of early voting days like they did in November 2020.
