FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18)– After fixing nearly 50 errors, the state board of elections officially certified the results of last month’s primary Friday.
“This is standard procedure that happens in elections. The election’s been certified. It takes a number of people to run a successful election,” said Josh Branscum, the Chairman of the State Board of Elections.
The Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes disagrees. Thursday, she told reporters that if she would have been two minutes late to the meeting on Tuesday, the State Board of Election would have certified the results with nearly 50 errors from 20 different counties.
She said that the errors range from simple math errors where the addition was wrong, to transcription errors where the wrong vote total was written in. Although she said none of the errors would have changed the outcome of the election, every vote should be properly counted because we have had elections that came down to a few votes.
“We have a Governor sitting in the office by 83 votes. You have a legislator sitting in the General Assembly by one vote. Every vote does matter. Every election matters. And the State Board of Elections has to live up to the process of ensuring that every vote cast will properly be counted,” she said.
While some county clerks agree with Grimes, others do not. Several say she is making a big issue out of a normal mistake and accusing her of playing political games.
As far as the Board of Elections goes, they have now moved on to this upcoming election in November.
