Dunklin County election recount smooth process

KENNETT — Recent voting irregularities at Dunklin County raised eyebrows in parts of the community and caused the question of election integrity to rear its befuddling head.

Dunklin County sheriff’s deputy Aaron Waynick, one of two candidates for the sheriff’s post, was told initially and unofficially, very soon after the Aug. 6 primary election votes were counted, that he won the race against his opponent, Malden Department of Public Safety Capt. Nick Darter.

However, that was inaccurate.

Within an hour of announcing the unofficial results and pointing to Waynick as sheriff-elect, Dunklin County Clerk Kent Hampton broke the news to him that the ballot count was off.

Of two ballot boxes retrieved from one county town, the total from only one tabulator within one box was counted on election night, Hampton said.

When Hampton and his deputy clerks reviewed the findings immediately following the initial tally, they saw just 126 votes cast at Campbell.

And they knew that was incorrect.

When the second Campbell ballot box was added and the two were tabulated, 334 votes were recorded for Darter and 114 for Waynick, not 126 votes in total.

Hampton took responsibility for the inaccuracy and announced just as immediately a recount was in order.

He scheduled the process for Aug. 12, and initiated such for every race per state guidelines.

On the afternoon of Aug. 12, the Dunklin County Commission meeting room at the county courthouse in Kennett filled with Hampton; his deputy clerks; election judges sworn into service the morning of Aug. 12; the two candidates and their witnesses; the same voting machines used during the Aug. 6 primary; the very same ballots already cast; and Henry M. Adkins and Sons Inc. Election Services representative Laura Schaefer.

Outside the chambers was busy as well.

Police officers and sheriff’s office deputies, members of the media and interested residents, county officials and candidates, as well as the two sheriff’s candidates’ families and friends, all waited for nearly four hours while the total recount took place.

When the votes from each town in the county were tabulated, just as on election night, Hampton brought hard copies of every result of every race to table in the courthouse hallway and placed the stapled pages out for review.

A total of 4,422 votes were cast.

Darter received 2,234 votes, 50.52%, to Waynick’s 2,188 votes, 49.48%.

Debbie Waynick, Aaron Waynick’s mother, wants voters to understand the error was human, that computers, and in this case voting machines, are capable of performing only tasks that humans request. And that no so-called “election rigging” took place.

A conversation between Debbie Waynick and Hampton was cordial and informative, she said.

“There’s just a lot of people thinking there’s something deceptive going on,” Debbie Waynick said. “I just want people to understand that when they come out for the presidential election that the machines were working right and everything like that was OK.”

The discussion among the two resulted in Debbie Waynick suggesting further checks and balances that were not in place on Aug. 6 become policy set in stone at the clerk’s office.

The vote effectively cleaved the county in half not just politically and between two Republicans, but territorially, between the north and south ends of the county.

Waynick carried Kennett and all precincts south but Cardwell, while Darter carried all precincts north of Kennett, plus Cardwell.