Dunklin County election re-count slated for Monday

KENNETT — Dunklin County Clerk Kent Hampton on Thursday, Aug. 8, said voting irregularities that occurred in the election Tuesday, Aug. 6, forced a re-count slated for Monday, Aug. 12, at his offices at the Dunklin County Courthouse.

Hampton admitted he was responsible for the error and initiated plans for a total ballot recount for every race.

“The wrong was on our part,” Hampton said. “It wasn’t on any of the judges at the election polls.

“It wasn’t with any of the candidates,” he continued. “It’s just that we failed to run one of the tabulators on behalf of Campbell. Everything else seemed to be in line.”

Unofficial reports following Tuesday’s election indicated Dunklin County Sheriff’s Office deputy and candidate for sheriff Aaron Waynick defeated his opponent, Malden Department of Public Safety Capt. Nick Darter, by more than 100 votes.

However, by later Tuesday night, another unofficial tally indicated Darter defeated Waynick by 47 votes.

Hampton explained the issue to Waynick, Darter and to news outlets .

“When the Campbell precincts came in, we only ran a part of that,” Hampton told The Delta Dunklin Democrat on Wednesday morning, Aug. 7. “I had two machines there at Campbell.

“Each one of them has a TM, a tabulator in the machine, to tabulate the votes,” the clerk continued. “When we first ran Campbell, we only ran one of the TMs, the tabulators, that just showed 126 votes. That is what was initially reported.”

That was prior to the error being discovered, Hampton said.

“The second TM had somehow slipped through us,” the clerk explained. “We ran both of them.

“That showed a total of 490 votes,” he added. “Which were heavily in favor of Darter. And that flipped the election.”

Both candidates and witnesses were invited to be present for the re-count, and he was recalibrating computers to accommodate the rerun, Hampton said.