Voters who are not registered with the Democrat, Republican or Libertarian parties are allowed to choose which partisan ballot they prefer in the primary. Apparently, not every election worker is aware of that fact.
YES! Weekly Editor Brian Clarey found that out the hard way when he went to vote at Rankin Elementary in northeast Greensboro this morning. As a result of human error on the part of an election worker, he was unable to cast his vote in important US Senate, congressional, state legislative and sheriff races. As discouraging as the experience was, it also serves as a lesson in how many problems at the polls can be rectified.
Clarey went to his polling place determined to vote Republican this year.
“I had been thinking about it all week,” he said. “There’s a lot more action on the Republican side. That’s why I’m an independent.”
The voter formed signed by Clarey indicates that he asked for the Republican ballot.
“They put the sticker on the paper. I signed my name,” Clarey recounted. “The old guy shuffled off to the machine. Confused, I could tell. Because he kept looking at the machine, at the paper, at the machine, at the paper.
“I said, ‘I’m an independent, so I get to choose,’” Clarey recalled. “He said, ‘Oh, you’re supposed to choose over there.’ He said, ‘Here it is,’ and he pressed the nonpartisan button.”
It appears that Clarey’s vote went awry in the final stage of execution.
“The law and our instructions are clear,” Guilford County Deputy Elections Director Charlie Collicutt said. “They say when an unaffiliated voter come in, you ask them which partisan primary they want to vote in or if they want to vote nonpartisan. That’s the way it’s supposed to happen. We emphasize that in our training and in our handbook.”
And that’s the way it almost went. Collicutt later called the precinct and discovered that the R for “Republican” was circled on Clarey’s voter form.
“On the voting machine you will see Democrat, Republican or unaffiliated,” Collicutt said. “At that final step, that voting machine operator did not do what he was supposed to do. I don’t know whether he wasn’t following the law or had had brain freeze or what.”
Clarey was only able to vote for school board and state court of appeals judges.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry, too late, there’s nothing I can do,’” Clarey said. “I left with a bad taste.”
Actually, Collicutt said, the election worker does have the ability to change the ballot before the voter makes her selections and casts the ballot.
“In my defense, it was early, and I hadn’t had much coffee,” Clarey said.
Now that the electronic ballot has already been cast, Collicutt said he has asked the precinct judge to allow Clarey to come back and fill out a provisional ballot. He’ll be allowed to vote only for partisan races to avoid voting twice for judges and school board members. The provisional ballot will be counted during the board of elections’ canvass next week.
“I’m going to tell them to give him a provisional ballot,” Collicutt said, “and see what the heck is going on out there.”
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