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November 8, 2008

Walker still has at least a week to ask for new vote tally against Hopson

By Kelly Young

kyoung@jacksonvilleprogress.com

As of Thursday afternoon, Campaign Manager Zach Vaughn said the Brian K. Walker campaign had not yet decided whether they would seek a recount of Tuesday’s election results. Walker lost his bid for state representative against incumbent Chuck Hopson by only 102 votes — 25,928 to 26,030.

According to the Texas Secretary of State’s office, Walker has grounds for a recount because the difference between the number of votes Walker and Hopson received, 102, is less than 10 percent — or 2,603 votes — of the number of votes received by Hopson.

Under the state’s guidelines, Walker has until 5 p.m. on the second day after the election is canvassed to request a recount. The county is required to canvass the election between the 8th and 13th days after election day. County Clerk Laverne Lusk said she hopes to canvass the election on either next Wednesday or Thursday, in which case Walker’s deadline would be either Friday, Nov. 14 or Monday, Nov. 17.

If he does decide to officially challenge the results, Walker would have to pay to cover the recount costs.

“He could do it one of two ways. He could have the machines check them again or he could ask that a hand count be done — that would mean physically checking the ballots,” Lusk said. “The paper ballots would be physically counted by hand, and for the electronic votes, we would produce a cast-vote record which would tell us how many times each candidate was selected. With 28 precincts in the county you would need to have several election judges working, and it could become pretty costly.”

TSOS advised Lusk on Wednesday that it would be permissible for Walker to seek a recount in specific counties without requesting a recount of the entire House District 11. On election day, Walker won a majority of votes in Panola and Rusk counties, while Hopson carried Cherokee and Houston counties.

This coming Monday is the last day the county can accept overseas ballots. Lusk said her office mailed out 113 overseas ballots for the November election, 76 of which have been returned and counted. The county also received 42 provisional ballots on Tuesday.

“The provisional ballots may or may not count, that will be for the early ballot board to decide, but there are enough ballots still out there to potentially change the outcome of the election,” she said. “We have talked back and forth over the last few days, but Walker has not officially asked for a recount at this point. I would think that once the provisional ballots have been checked and the overseas deadline has passed, he will probably have a pretty good idea about whether it is worth it or not to ask for a recount.”

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