Putnam County Election Commission certified the official results of the August 6 election during a meeting Wednesday morning.
Administrator of Elections Jennifer Murphy said the certification process finalized the outcomes for the county general, state and federal primary, and municipal elections. Murphy said the final totals included seven provisional ballots that were not part of the unofficial results released Election Night.
“Well, none of them changed the winner, but they of course had a few offices that offered a wider gap between some candidates,” Murphy said. “So that’s the part that changed, but all the original winners are still the original winners.”
Murphy said the commission spent the days between the election and the certification meeting researching provisional ballots to determine which ones were eligible to be counted. Murphy said the staff also conducted a personal audit by proofing tally tapes to ensure they matched the results recorded in the computer system.
“There’s several different avenues I’ll say about verifying that every result is accurate and correct,” Murphy said. “So we kind of go through a personal audit, if you will, of all the results before certification.”
The commission also receives a report from the state office providing precinct and candidate totals to compare against local machine totals. Murphy said the commission verifies each number on the state report against the data published on the county website before the board signs off on the results.
“They actually go in and verify that this person had, you know, or this candidate, I should say, had 10 votes here and this person had 11 votes. What we actually do is we compare tally tapes to our machine results.”
Murphy said every precinct in the county saw an increase in participation compared to previous expectations. Murphy said even the smallest precincts in Putnam County experienced the upward trend in voter turnout.
The certification of the results triggers a five-day window during which a candidate may legally contest the election. Murphy said the commission also used the meeting to approve poll workers, sign wall certificates for winning county officials, and lock ballot boxes for the upcoming November election.
“Well, the next major event is going to be of course the November 3rd election,” Murphy said. “So we are starting to get ready for it. We actually began the November election cycle the day before the August election.”
Murphy said the office began receiving absentee ballot requests for the November 3rd election on August 5.
