Twenty-three more ballots were counted on Monday when the Board of County Commissioners went through provisional ballots during their weekly board meeting. There were 37 Washington County provisional ballots, which are ballots that are placed in sealed envelopes after voting when a voter’s eligibility is in question. The eligibility often relates to a voter not being registered, not having an updated address or not presenting a photo ID. Nine members of the public watched as the commissioners went through the provisional ballots.
The 14 provisional ballots that were not accepted at Monday’s meeting, and therefore not opened, included 2 ballots from voters who had recently moved into the county, 7 ballots from unregistered voters, 1 from a voter with no ID, one from a voter wanting to change parties at the polls, 1 with a signature that didn’t match and 2 advance ballots that didn’t have signatures.
Of the 23 provisional ballots that were counted, 12 were address changes within Washington County and 11 were advance ballots that were returned to the polling place instead of the courthouse. Five of the 12 ballots that had address changes within the county were only partially counted, meaning none of the township portion was counted, but all other races were accepted.
Sherman Township had the most provisional ballots that were accepted with 6, and Hanover Township had 4. Other townships with only one or two provisional ballots that were accepted included Kimeo, Coleman, Linn, Washington, Lowe, Greenleaf and Farmington. Washington City also had a few provisionals.
All of the provisional ballots that were accepted were Republican ballots except for 2 Democrat ballots and one unaffiliated.
After the 23 accepted ballots were counted, Lisa Moser picked up 14 votes in the race for 106th District State Representative in the Republican Primary while her challenger, John Ungerer, picked up 6. Jim Swim, who was running unopposed on the Democrat ticket for the 106 th , picked up 2 more votes from the provisional ballots. In the Board of County Commissioner race for the Second District, Dave Willbrant picked up four more votes after provisionals were counted while his challenger, Joanne Dague, picked up one more.
Also during Monday’s meeting:
• Commissioner David Willbrant said hospitals in the county said they have gotten enough COVID-19 funding from other sources and wanted to direct their portion of the SPARK money to the local schools. Willbrant said some cities in the county have waved their SPARK, funding, too, so their allotment will go to the other cities. Whatever money is left over from the cities will go back to the county.
County clerk Diana Svanda said it was determined that the county cannot be reimbursed with SPARK funds for all of the administrative leave county employees used this spring when department heads granted days or weeks off to keep employees away from each other in case of quarantines. Svanda said the overtime by Health Department director Tiffany Hayman and Emergency Management director Randy Hubbard is also not an eligible reimbursement by SPARK funding. The county can be reimbursed, though, if an employee gets paid while staying home on quarantine.
Washington County will get more than $1 million in SPARK funding, which can be used by a variety of government and other entities to pay for COVID-19 eligible goods and services.