The State Senate District 27 election results have been contested.
Jay Hovey unofficially won the race by one vote on Tuesday over incumbent Tom Whatley after the provisional ballots were added to the total number of votes.
Jeannie Burniston, the Alabama Republican Party communications director, confirmed that the paperwork to contest the results was filed by the deadline of noon Thursday, but she wouldn’t say which candidate filed it.
Hovey and Whatley did not return calls from the Opelika-Auburn News on Thursday afternoon.
Burniston said she also couldn’t comment on whether there will be a recount because recounts are filed with the local county party organizations.
“A contest means that they feel they have a case about something pertaining to the election and the way it was conducted – problems with the voting, anything like that,” Burniston said. “If it’s just a matter of a recount – we don’t think that number is right – we recount the ballots.”
People are also reading…
The deadlines to file to contest the results or to request a recount were both at noon Thursday.
Burniston said more information about the process of contesting the election results will be released after the Republican Party holds a meeting to discuss the topic.
While Burniston said other races in Alabama have also been contested, including Alabama House District 1, Alabama House District 2, Alabama House District 28, Alabama House District 29, Lauderdale County Commission District 1, and several Republican Party executive committee seats in Lauderdale County.
The winner of this race will run against Democrat candidate Sherri Reese of Opelika in the general election in November.
Recap
On election night, Hovey appeared to be cruising to victory to those monitoring the results in Lee County, where he piled up 6,610 votes in that county to Whatley’s 3,942, or about 62% of the vote.
But despite Tallapoosa and Russell counties having far fewer voters than Lee County, Whatley dominated both counties to such a great extent that he nearly wiped out the entire deficit. Whatley won Tallapoosa by 3,540 votes to 1,555, or about 70%, and Russell by 881 to 202, or about 81%.
At that point, Hovey led Whatley 8,367 votes to 8,363, but the two candidates still had to wait a week for the provisional ballots to be counted.
On Tuesday, officials at the Lee County Meeting Center gathered to count the provisional ballots, which are votes where there was initially a question about the voter’s eligibility. The vote is counted once that question is resolved.
There were 87 total provisional ballots in the three-county district, including 67 in Lee, 14 in Tallapoosa and six in Russell.
Of those provisional ballots, 15 had the District 27 race on the ballot and were accepted to be counted, including 10 in Lee County and five in Tallapoosa County. Russell County did not have any accepted provisional ballots in the race.
Whatley beat Hovey on provisional ballots in both counties, winning 6-4 in Lee and 3-2 in Tallapoosa.
After adding those provisional votes to the precinct totals, Hovey still led by one vote, with a total of 16,745 votes cast, or 8,373 for Hovey and 8,372 for Whatley.
