An explanation this morning from Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin’s office about what triggered a recount of mail-in ballots in the Senate District 16 race raises more questions than it answers.
Second-place finisher Franklin Foil’s narrow eight-vote lead over fellow Republican Steve Carter for the runoff spot against the front-runner, Democrat Beverly Brooks Thompson, disappeared after Ardoin’s office rescanned the district’s mail-in ballots and found the eight votes Carter needed to tie Foil.
Though the three candidates were not notified of the development until late Sunday afternoon, Ardoin’s office learned there was a problem with the mail-in ballots as early as Saturday and rescanned them then, spokesman Tyler Brey says.
The problem had to do with the Canon scanner’s misread of some of the mail-in ballots, Brey says, adding that the office became aware of the problem after realizing there was a discrepancy between the number of mail-in ballots that had been mailed in and the number of ballots the machine showed it had scanned.
Brey could not say when exactly on Saturday the discrepancy was noticed, nor could he comment on why the candidates were not made aware of the problem until late Sunday—hours after media outlets had reported Franklin’s razor-thin victory over Carter—or why, when mail-in voting ended a full week before election day, the office waited so late to tabulate the mail-in votes.
Ardoin, who, himself, faces a runoff on Nov. 16 after failing to capture an outright victory in the primary, was unavailable for comment this morning.
But his office says candidates have until 4:30 p.m. Wednesday to ask for a recount, which Foil has already said he plans to do. The recount will be conducted Thursday at 10:30 a.m. at the voting machine warehouse and will be a hand recount of all mail-in ballots.
Brey could not say exactly how many mail-in ballots there are, but Foil said Sunday it is around 1,000.
If the election results as currently tabulated stands, all three candidates would advance to the runoff, where the top vote-getter would win.
