The Election is not over in Salt Lake County

I was present at The County Building on tuesday night as a ballot count observer. It was very interesting to watch the new process. PCMI cards came in in sealed bag's and workers organized and transferred these to a tray that was taken into the counting room where six cards at a time were read and downloaded on two machines. I assumed these were dibold workers, not clerk staff. The problem I had with the process, was there was no way to know what was happening. The only thing we as observers could see was the cards being placed into the machines, the button being pushed, and the screen line entry for each card would go from red to green. Only then could you see what polling location was being uploaded. The real problem was there was no actual way to verify counts by precinct in real time. This is a flaw that must be corrected in the future, because all we have to go on is the computer spitting out total numbers race wide. We were not able to tell what precincts were already counted, or not counted like in the past.

Based on some calculations on the close races in Salt Lake County, several including the House Speaker’s is still up for grabs. There are nearly 10,000 absentee ballots to be counted, and this process will not even start until this weekend.

The races that could still go either way are:

STATE SENATOR DIST #9

TRISHA S. BECK
DEM
10337
47.48%
WAYNE NIEDERHAUSER
REP
11415
52.43%

STATE SENATOR DIST #12

BRENT H. GOODFELLOW
DEM
6989
50.06%
CHRISTY ACHZIGER
REP
6286
45.03%
GRANT (RAY) PEARSON
CON
681
4.88%

STATE REPRESENTATIVE #22

CARL WILLIAM DUCKWOR
DEM
2472
46.41%
DEENA DETTON ELY
REP
2497
46.87%
MARILEE ROOSE
CON
184
3.45%
SARGE FROEHLE
PER
169
3.17%


STATE REPRESENTATIVE #29

JANICE FISHER
DEM
2190
46.83%
PHILLIP M. CONDER
REP
2115
45.23%
SUSAN KAYE SORENSEN
CON
241
5.15%
ANNELIESE HINKLE
PER
129
2.76%


STATE REPRESENTATIVE #36

PHIL RIESEN
DEM
5790
50.41%
SUSAN LAWRENCE
REP
5687
49.51%

STATE REPRESENTATIVE #45

LAURA BLACK
DEM
3655
49.76%
MARK WALKER
REP
3687
50.20%

STATE REPRESENTATIVE #49


F. JAY SEEGMILLER
DEM
4414
49.70%
GREG J. CURTIS
REP
4460
50.21%

COUNTY COUNCIL DIST #3


DIANE TURNER
DEM
12877
48.12%
DAVID A. WILDE
REP
13868
51.82%

COUNTY AUDITOR


JEFF HATCH
DEM
102179
49.89%
SEAN THOMAS
REP
102523
50.06%


In my opinion, based on the statistics and percentages, the following races I feel will change when the canvass is performed and all the paper ballots are counted. I sure hope the candidates have someone watching each ballot being counted….


State Senate District 9

State Representative’s 22, 29, 36, 45,

County Council District 3

County Auditor


Mark Towner, the Spyglass Moderator