While voters’ biggest concern voiced during public forums regarding redistricting in Madison County revolved around split precincts earlier this year, their worries seemed to come true when one candidate in District 2 realized his race had been left off some voter’s ballots when they received the wrong one on Election Day.
Sherri Warrell did her research regarding who she would vote for on Election Day for the District 2 position on the Madison County School Board. Walking into the polls at Madison Avenue, she had determined she’d vote for Rylon Thompson, however, she didn’t see his race on the ballot and began to question if his election was at a different time.
“We went ahead and voted, and we left,” Warrell said. “The more I thought about it, I knew he was supposed to be on my ballot, and it was missing him. Later, my husband went and Rylon was on his ballot. Right then and there I knew something really strange was going on.”
She told Rylon he wasn’t on her ballot and he said they’d been having a problem with that.
“I feel like my rights have been violated,” Warrell said. “My candidate was not on my ballot — neither candidate was on the ballot. It made me feel my vote was not important. It upset me a lot. I just hope we solve it somehow or another. I’m really, really disturbed and have lost faith in our voting system.”
Gary Peitz lives off of Hoy Road in Geneva Gardens and he went to vote at Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist – only to find Thompson’s race wasn’t on his ballot either.
“My wife and I were prepared to vote for him because we had been solicited and read his information and thought he was a good fit,” Peitz said. “He was not to be found anywhere on our ballot. I wondered where he was – I just knew he had campaigned in our area, because I saw his signs and wondered what happened. I didn’t know anything about it until I saw something on the news that night that he had been taken off.”
Peitz said Thompson stood for things they wanted to vote for and he feels badly for the candidate
“He campaigned and worked hard and, evidently, many of us didn’t get a chance to vote for him,” Peitz said. “Something’s not right.”
Thompson himself went to the polls first thing in the morning with his wife, Brandi, at First Presbyterian Church on Madison Avenue. They were handed ballots that didn’t have the Madison County School Board District 2 candidates.
“I went and asked to speak to the polling manager, and she said, ‘You don’t have the school district because they redrew the district lines,’” Thompson said. “I said, ‘Ma’am, you don’t understand. I’m the candidate.’ Her eyes just got wide open.”
He requested new ballots and she said she couldn’t do that because they had already been given some. Thompson then called Madison County Circuit Clerk Antia Ray who spoke to the polling manager and explained the situation. They voided the ballots Thompson and his wife had been given and issued them different ballots. At this time, Thompson didn’t think it was going to be that big of an issue.
“You may have people that live across the street from each other, and one of them may be in the school district and one of them might not but they both vote at the same precinct,” Thompson said. “So when these people scan the license, the computer is supposed to tell them which ballot they get. The poll workers were not aware of that. They were just handing people ballots.”
Ninety seven people had been issued ballots at that location before Thompson got there and corrected the issue. Thompson began going to other polling stations to be sure they were doing it the correct way. He went to Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist where he learned 196 people voted before the precinct realized they were a split district. They got that corrected, and every other district said they knew how to do it and were properly trained.
“At this point, I thought maybe this will be it,” Thompson said. “If there were no more issues and it wasn’t a smaller margin than 300 votes, maybe it would be alright.”
Right before lunch, Thompson is waving a sign by the road and a lady comes up to him and says she was here to vote for him, but he wasn’t on her ballot.
“I was like, ‘Man, I thought we had got this fixed,’” Thompson said. “She said she lived in Summertree and all of her friends live there around her and were prepared to come vote for him, but I wasn’t on any of their ballots. So, I’m really starting to freak out. This is a disaster.”
Cathey Plunkett lives in Summertree and didn’t know Thompson but had researched which person she wanted to vote for and decided on him. She even looked up the map on the county website to confirm she was in District 2 prior to voting.
“I got to the voting precinct, they gave me my ballot, and I went to fill it out,” Plunkett said. “I came back and I said, ‘There’s nobody from the school board on here for me to vote for’ and she said, ‘Well, everybody didn’t vote for school board members.’ I told her I was in District 2, because I checked it out on the map before I got here.”
The polling worker said she had given her the correct number according to the computer and took her to the man in charge. He looked her up in the paper log, and there was missing information next to her name.
“We talked to all these people that live in Summertree that happened to be there voting at the same time, and none of them had the vote for the school board,” Plunkett said. “I called the Circuit Clerk’s office.”
The woman who answered the phone looked up Plunkett and told her she lived in District 3 and said she may have looked at an old map.
“If that’s their one job, I just think they need to have the right map on the website,” Plunkett said. “After I annoyed her a little bit, she put you through to the circuit clerk, and, of course, it went to voicemail. I left her a message, and I never heard back. Now, I don’t know if I’m in 2 or 3, but if you look at the map, Summertree is plainly in 2. Our whole subdivision could have been up to 700 votes because there’s about 300 houses.”
Plunkett said she plans to make a trip to the circuit clerk’s office to have it figured out before the next election.
“I don’t think anybody purposefully did that – all of the people at the polls were trying to help me,” Plunkett said. “It just makes me want to very much make sure everything is right before I vote again. Someone at some point said they had not had the time to add some of the people into where they should be. That may just be talk. I don’t really know what happened.”
When Thompson learned of the confusion with Summertree, he went back into the polling location to figure out what was going on. The polling manager told him they were going off of the information on the computers.
“I said we were gonna have to do something else, because the wrong ballots were being given to people,” Thompson said. “He asked me to give him a street name in Summertree and I did. He said it wasn’t in my district, but I was looking at the map and said they redrew the lines and know for a fact they are in my district. He said there was nothing he could do.”
He called Wray, the circuit clerk, again.
“She said, ‘Rylon, I’m so sorry. This is a disaster, and I’m so sorry this happened to you. You probably got grounds to contest this election and potentially get a special election,’” Thompson said.
She called the Secretary of State Michael Watson and called Thompson back about 10 minutes later to tell him nothing could be done as half the day had gone by. He would have to contest the election later. According to the numbers, Thompson lost the election by 1,618 votes.
“By the end of the day, I’m quite certain that hundreds of people were given the wrong ballots,” Thompson said. “I have reports of Summertree, Acadian Cove, Stonegate, and different parts around my district that were given the wrong ballots. Once they had been issued a ballot and voted, they weren’t letting them vote again. If there were people that should have been issued my ballot that didn’t get it, I’m quite certain that there were people who did not live in my district that were given ballots with me on it.”
The next day, Thompson went to the circuit clerk’s office where he explained that the school board commissioned a company called Cropper out of Ohio to do the redistricting based on the latest census data. “After the board approved the final rendition, it was the company’s responsibility to provide the school board, the circuit clerk and the county with the proper maps, the proper street names and the proper address ranges to coincide with the newly drawn district lines,” Thompson said. “I have seen the logbook that they were using, and all of the ranges on many of the streets were zero.”
Thompson said Wray told him this is what caused the failure of the computers to recognize the voters within his district.
“It’s a failure on so many levels – we saw some people that actually turned around and walked out of the polling locations because of the incredible incompetence of this situation,” Thompson said. “Voter confidence has been extremely impaired because of this situation. Unless I was in the middle of it, it would have been hard for me to imagine.”
Thompson also attempted to reach out to the District 2 Election Commissioner, Lauren Payne, for help without luck.
“I have talked to the Election Commissioner, and she immediately shut down and forwarded me to the attorney,” Thompson said. “The attorney hasn’t been very informative. I emailed Payne, and I copied the Circuit Clerk and the Secretary of State asking when the election will be certified and if there’s a potential for a special election. The response from the attorney was that they’re waiting for the deadline of the mail in ballots to expire, and then they will certify the election. I don’t know if it’s proper for the Election Commissioner to even certify the election knowing that hundreds of people were given the improper ballots.”
Thompson said he will exercise both his rights in this situation – to audit the election and to contest it.
“I truly believe that the citizens of Madison County need to know what happened, and that this was a failure of the election process on so many different levels,” Thompson said. “It’s clear that the poll workers were not properly trained on what to do in the split precincts because they were handing out the wrong ballots – that’s a failure. It’s a failure from the company that failed to provide that information. It’s a failure of the school board, who should have made sure that the company they hired to do the job actually completed the job. It’s a failure of the circuit clerk to allow the election to proceed knowing that she did not have the correct data that was required to have correct ballots issued. It’s a failure on so many levels.”
Thompson said he believes people need to know what happened.
“If the voters chose my opponent, Bill Grissett, I would be fine with that, but I won’t be fine in accepting the outcome of a blotched election where hundreds of people were given the wrong ballot and voters turned around and left because of the incompetence that they were seeing,” Thompson said.
Thompson now plans to conduct an audit of the election and figure out how many people were given the incorrect ballots.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of it,” Thompson said. “After I finish all of that, we’re going to look at the training that’s been done for the poll workers and the poll managers to be proactive and be sure that this crap doesn’t happen again. If you lose a fair election, there’s really nothing you can say, but if they deny me a special election, they’re essentially telling the citizens of Madison County that their vote didn’t matter.”
Neither the Circuit Clerk nor the District 2 Election Commissioner immediately responded for comment.
