Health board race goes to Cape County verification board

For the second time in 10 months, Cape Girardeau County has witnessed a razor-thin margin of victory in an election contest.

Political newcomer Eric Becking won a seat on the county’s Public Health Center (PHC) Board of Trustees on Tuesday, with 1,593 votes to incumbent Emily Collins’ 1,592.

The results are unofficial and must be certified by a bi-partisan verification board, which will meet today and Friday with county clerk and election authority Kara Clark Summers.

Summers has heard this song before.

Last time, the ending to the tune abruptly changed.

Emily Collins

In the June 2 municipal election, Tony Smee appeared to have kept his seat on the Cape Girardeau School Board after the polls closed — with a two-vote margin over Missy Nieveen Phegley, 1,708 to 1,706.

However, after the verification board did its work, Phegley emerged as the winner, 1,720 to 1,715, and the Southeast Missouri State University educator was seated on the board of education of the 4,330-student district.

Last year, the verification board, made up of election judges from both major political parties, manually counted every precinct in the Cape Girardeau School District.

Smee, the apparent victor on election night but who lost when the certified result was established, had nothing but praise for the process.

“After eleven additional absentee ballots were counted on Thursday, Missy Phegley and I were tied. Because of the tie, our County Clerk’s election team hand counted each ballot cast for the Cape school board race to verify voter intent,” Smee said in a statement. “That required a team of judges to examine each ballot to see if anyone indicated their vote by a check mark, or a circled oval, or any other indication that the ballot machine couldn’t read.”

“That’s how our system is supposed to work, and Kara Clark Summers made sure it did. My hat is off to her and her staff and volunteers for a dedicated and professional election,” he added.

Redux

Summers plans to follow a similar process now that an even closer contest, candidates Becking and Collins separated by a single tally, emerged for an open seat on the PHC board after Tuesday’s voting.

This time, results from all 29 county polling places and two central voting stations (35 total precincts) will be counted because PHC is a county-wide race.

In elections where there are no close contests on election night, the verification board meets regardless to certify the vote, to test voter equipment and other tasks.

“By law, we are to pull randomly not less than five percent of all election precincts but not less than one precinct, in order to conduct a manual recount of selected contested races and ballot issues (if any) in the selected precincts,” said Summers, in quoting the relevant Missouri statute.

“We try to do the work of certification quickly because we know governmental entities generally want to seat new officeholders as quickly as possible,” Summers said.

Recount?

“Nothing stops a candidate from asking for a recount after any final certification,” said Summers, who has served in her current role since 2007.

If the margin of separation is less than 1%, a losing candidate may ask the Circuit Court to authorize a formal recount, said Summers, who noted in such a case, the petitioning candidate will not incur a cost.

This story is updated.