Schauner takes third spot in city race, new election totals show

Computer glitch causes recount in city race, Goodell finishes fourth

David Schauner didn’t lose his race for Lawrence City Commission after all.

Schauner, who went to sleep Tuesday night as the fourth-place finisher for three open commission seats, emerged Wednesday morning as the third-place finisher after election officials discovered they had tallied more than 7,000 votes twice.

“I think I’m as surprised as I can be. I’m delighted. I’m speechless, and that’s unusual for me,” Schauner said Wednesday afternoon.

The shakeup means that Schauner, unofficially with 6,939 votes, would defeat Lynn Goodell, with 6,790 votes, if the unofficial totals hold. Tuesday night’s incorrect unofficial totals had Goodell topping Schauner, 9,656 to 9,443.

The mistake still was being investigated Wednesday afternoon, said Patty Jaimes, Douglas County clerk. The snafu did not affect the outcomes of other races in the county, including the defeated $59 million bond issue for Lawrence public schools or any of the top four finishers in the race for seats on the Lawrence school board.

Jaimes defended her office’s performance during an election-counting process that was delayed for more than two hours Tuesday night, a hiatus blamed on incorrect computer chips being installed in office computers.

“I don’t have a clear answer on whether it was a human error or whether it was a (computer) glitch,” Jaimes said Wednesday afternoon. “Our saving grace is that’s why they’re unofficial totals. That’s all I’m saying.”

Results from Tuesday election are to be certified Friday morning by Douglas County commissioners, who will consider whether to count 204 provisional ballots and others unable to be counted by machine. Provisional ballots typically are cast by voters who have changed names or moved since the last election.

The revised unofficial totals show that 18,218 of the county’s 55,490 voters made it to the polls Tuesday, for a turnout of 32.8 percent. Tuesday night, the incorrect numbers had turnout higher than 45 percent.

Wednesday morning, Jaimes contacted Lynn Goodell, who was thought to have won the third-place spot, and unofficial fourth-place finisher David Schauner about the miscount.

Lawrence City Commission candidates David Schauner, left, and Dennis Boog Highberger chat while the ballots are counted at the Douglas County Courthouse on Tuesday.

The third-place finisher wins a two-year term on the commission. The fourth-place finisher does not.

Election workers noticed the discrepancy Wednesday morning, Jaimes said.

Tuesday night’s final computer printout showed there were 25,016 ballots recorded. But the total of votes reported from the poll books manually recorded at each polling place showed there were 18,218 total ballots, Jaimes said.

That’s a difference of 6,798 ballots — which means those ballots may have been counted twice, Jaimes said. She said there were also 204 provisional ballots that had yet been counted, so that made the total number of votes that could change 7,002.

“The ballots didn’t go through twice. But the software program counted them twice. We’re trying to figure out why,” Jaimes said.

Jaimes said the problem seemed to come about during the last grouping of polling places recorded by the computers. She said there were 23 county precincts where the computer counted the numbers twice. Seventeen of those precincts were within the city.

The following are the 17 precincts in the city the software counted twice. The numbers listed are the incorrect vote totals that will need to be corrected in Friday’s vote canvass: