September 26, 2006 Hamblen County Election Contest Ruling (I)

Just got it! The Memorandum Opinion of Chancellor Robert Corlew.

Chancellor Corlew ruled in connection with the September 22 Trial regarding the Complaint for Election Contest filed by former county commissioners Edwin P. Osborne and Bobby Reinhardt against Wanda Neal (Hamblen County Administrator of Elections) and the Hamblen County Election Commission (Dwaine Evans, Randall Johnson, Gayle Bruce, Lyle Doty, and Judy Blackburn).

In the complaint former county commissioners Edwin Osborne and Bobby Reinhardt alleged various problems on Election Night, August 3.

Among their concerns were *two power outages in the Election Commission offices during the vote counting process, *allegedly unqualified individuals provided by Microvote to handle and/or assist with the vote-counting, *the open support by Election Commissioner Randall Johnson of County Commissioner Edwin Osborne's opponent Paul Lebel (who is a business partner of Mayor Gary Johnson, Randall Johnson's son), *problems with the Microvote vote-counting software, and, perhaps most troublesome of all, *the presentation of numerous conflicting, incomplete, and contradictory voting tallies throughout the night from the time that the first early voting totals were given out (about 9:30 pm on August 3) up until a final total was provided at nearly 2:00 am on the morning of August 4.

Here is the quick summary of the chancellor's Memorandum Opinion:

The Court found that numerous circumstances surrounding the election gave cause for concern, but there was not sufficient cause demonstrated to void the election.

Although the Court did not find fraud, the Court found that "due to a combination of misfortunes which occurred after the polls closed on election night, a recount of the votes is in order. Therefore, a Master will be appointed who will conduct the recount and will make findings of fact and conclusions of law which will be reported to the Court."

Check my post Hamblen County Election Contest (II) for additional information on the evidence that was presented and the ruling.