Cliffhanger In My District! Elrod - Mahern

From today's Star; Democrat Ed Mahern of Indianapolis today filed for a recount and a contest of his 7-vote loss in his bid for re-election to the Indiana House. I voted for Elrod so I like the direction this "trend" is taking!

Problems included electronic voting machines that weren't working when voters first arrived at the polls and paper ballots left unsecured because they couldn't immediately be counted, he said.

We heard about this the morning of the elections. I didn't think they were talking about our (Indianapolis) booths. I saw nothing of any problems at my location. The next paragraph really caught my eye.

"In several precincts in the district, poll workers took the unprecedented step of recreating some ballots -- actually filling in ballots without the voters present -- after (the original ballots) were rejected by the electronic scanning machine," Mahern said. "In virtually every case, this happened hours after the voter had left the polling place."

The machine "rejected" some ballots, and in the effort to make every vote count, the poll volunteers "recreated" the voter's ballot in such a way that the votes will be accepted. In their editorials, the Star encourages counting even the ballots that are ineligible for one reason or another, but Mr Mahern seems to criticize counting these ballots (which could arguably be considered invalid). If there were rules then the volunteers would have had guides to follow. Without any guides, I think they just did what had to be done to get the votes counted.
I am a partisan Republican, I have the conviction and passion to have been a precinct committeeman in the past. The same qualities of strength of opinion could definitely have been said of my Democrat counter-part. But every issue we encountered (there weren't many) was handled between the two of us in a way that was agreed on by both of us. I think it's disturbing that Mr Mahern would cast doubt on the integrity of the workers at the polls. Have your recount, you deserve it. But leave your excuses to your own inability to convince your district, in a year of a Democrat wave, to vote for you.

The organizational meetings will be held today, the first day of the new session. Elrod says he's just going to show up and see how events shake out!

Elrod said he didn't know what to expect.
"I'm going to show up and find out what happens," he said.
If the victories by Republicans Harris and Elrod hold up, Democrats still will have a 51-49 majority in the 100-member House.