The results of last week’s elections are now known across the Eastern Shore, but more details have emerged about questions of fairness and accurate voting.

John Lake could request recount in Daphne

Daphne mayoral candidate and longtime councilman John Lake may have lost in his bid to unseat Mayor Dane Haygood, but Lake said he has considered filing for a recount of the vote in at least one district.

“It just seems odd that one district could amount to 25 percent of the total vote on its own,” Lake said. “And that it happened to also be in the district where the voting machines went down and had issues is also troubling.”

377 votes separated Haygood and Lake, giving Haygood the 52 percent of the vote needed to avoid a runoff election.

Lake said he would like to get access to the voter logs to see where the influx of voters were coming from.

City officials said Lake does have right to request the recount within two days of the results being canvassed. City Clerk Becky Hayes said that while she hasn’t gone through this process before, she understood Lake’s concern while still maintaining that the city appeared to have had a successful election.

“He just looked at the percentages and thought they were off and that’s what threw up a red flag for him,” Hayes said. “That’s why he is thinking about having a recount for that particular machine.”

Lake said he also heard reports of voting machines being left unattended, which he said gave him concerns.

“That’s just not something that should be happening in an election,” Lake said.

Lake said he’s not certain that the recount of that district will make a huge difference in the race.

“I don’t expect the outcome to change,” Lake said. “But I put too much time and effort into my race to not pursue this. It’s a fairness issue – I don’t want to look back in 10 years and regret not having said something.”

State official was on site to monitor Fairhope election

After requests from multiple sources, Joel Laird, the general counsel for the Alabama Secretary of State’s office, was present throughout the day at the Fairhope Civic Center during last week’s municipal elections.

“I had some received some requests personally and through a system we have set up at the Secretary of State’s office to come down and oversee the election,” Laird. “We had requests from all over the state to do this, but this was a city where we had both the municipality and a candidate to ask us to come down, so here we are.”

The Secretary of State’s office oversees voting in the state of Alabama, including monitoring election sites to make sure there are no issues or problems.

Laird said he was on hand to make sure everything went properly and smoothly, adding that he saw no issues during voting last Tuesday.

“I haven’t seen any issues of concern,” Laird said. “There were some typical issues like you might have a paper jam in a machine or you may have a voter that didn’t completely fill out the ballot like they should, but if you can determine their intent in voting, you can redo the ballot and spoil the incorrect ballot. And that would be done in front of poll watchers.”

Laird said he felt it was a well-run election for Fairhope.

“I can tell you – I have not noticed anything wrong,” Laird said. “Everything seems to have gone very smoothly.”