Posted on 05/04/2006 7:49:49 AM PDT by SmithL
Nine of the 12 incumbent Knox County commissioners facing disqualification by term limits won their party nominations anyway, according to unofficial returns released late Wednesday.
Among them were all five commissioners who have challenged the validity of the Knox County Charter - David Collins, Diane Jordan, Phil Guthe, John Griess and Billy Tindell.
Guthe said the citizens who overwhelmingly voted for the at-risk incumbents sent a clear message that they want to keep their representatives.
"That's a pretty loud statement," Guthe said.
At least six of the 39 write-in candidates prevailed in their primary races.
The Election Commission has nine more days to certify the results, but the real test will come in Knox County Chancellor John Weaver's courtroom.
The Election Commission has asked Weaver to rule whether it has the authority to scrub the nine at-risk incumbents' names from the general election ballot in light of a state Supreme Court decision in a Shelby County term limits case.
In the Knox County case, Weaver has been asked to determine whether the Knox County Charter - and the term limits provision passed by voters in 1994 - is valid. The Election Commission has also asked Weaver to decide whether the term limits provision applies to other offices like sheriff and county mayor.
"I think the court case that's coming up will bring some clarity to all this so we can move on," Guthe said.
Election Administrator Greg Mackay said Wednesday that certification wouldn't address the legal issues swirling around the vote.
"We just certify the numbers," he said.
Incumbents Wanda Moody and Mary Lou Horner, who suspended campaigning when term limits became an issue, lost, as did Mike McMillan.
Greg "Lumpy" Lambert and Margaret Massey-Cox were nominated to represent the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, in the contest to replace Larry Stephens, who didn't run for re-election.
Commission Chairman Scott Moore won a close contest against former commissioner Leo Cooper.
Write-ins who won as Democrats include Colvin Idol (3rd District, Seat B); Joan M. Wagner (4th District, Seat A); Elaine Davis (4th District, Seat B); James Brian Pirtle (8th District, Seat A); and Tom Salter (5th District, Seat C).
Nick Della Volpe won the GOP nod for the 1st District's Seat A.
"I'm grateful that people came out to vote," Della Volpe said.
Della Volpe could square off against Jordan if she prevails in her bid to overthrow term limits.
Della Volpe said that while he's not sure of his opponent yet, the term limits are clear.
"I'm assuming that at the end of the day, (the charter) means what it says," Della Volpe said.
Knox County election officials counted paper ballots all afternoon and into the evening on Wednesday, but verification didn't come until after 10 p.m.
Workers reconvened in the Small Assembly Room of the City County Building about 1 p.m. to pick up where they left off at 2 a.m.
Amid tables littered with soda cans and water bottles, and cordoned off by yellow police tape, teams of four counted the remainder of the nearly 4,300 write-in ballots cast on Tuesday.
One person read aloud each vote from each ballot while two others kept separate tallies on large score sheets. A fourth team member monitored the process for accuracy.
"It's just tedious work," Mackay said. "It's not complicated. It just takes awhile."
According to the Election Commission, there were 4,278 paper ballots cast on Tuesday. Early voters cast an additional 1,849 paper ballots.
The Election Commission brought in teams of extra workers to count those ballots, but then ran into problems retrieving data from the cartridges for Knox County's aging voting machines. The release of the initial election returns was delayed by a couple of hours before the glitch was fixed, adding to an already long night.
Such problems aren't likely to happen again, however, nor do election officials expect to face another mountain of paper ballots.
This week's election was the last for the county's 343 voting machines, all of which are more than 20 years old. Five hundred new, digital display machines are on order from an Austin, Texas-based firm and should be ready for the August general election, Mackay said.
At a cost of $1.45 million, the upgraded units can accommodate even typed-in votes for write-in candidates, he said.
The only drawback is the new models generally require a bit more time to use for each voter than the current models.
"That's why you need more of them," said Mackay, who wished he had them earlier. "I would have been out of here at 10 o'clock (on election night)."
The election dispute has been a dozen years in the making. In 1994, Knox County voters overwhelmingly passed a term-limits referendum, but the measure was never enforced because of questions about its constitutionality.
In March, the state Supreme Court upheld a similar term limits provision in Shelby County. State and local election officials determined the decision applied to Knox County as well, because both counties have a charter form of government.
State law specifies, however, that in the interest of guarding against voter fraud, a ballot cannot be changed within 40 days of an election.
Legal efforts to scrub the names of 12 term-limited County Commission incumbents from the ballot failed, but the Election Commission said the candidates would be disqualified if they win.
If any candidates are disqualified, Democratic and Republican Party leaders have said they will hold conventions, as required by their bylaws, to name replacements.
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