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Lincoln County clerk reports 14,840 registered voters, 6,560 ballots counted; no race‑changing discrepancies
Summary
County elections staff presented the primary canvass, reporting 14,840 registered voters and 6,560 accepted ballots, highlighted rejected absentee causes and a tabulator separation issue, and said audits found no discrepancy large enough to change race outcomes.
The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners reviewed the canvass of the recent primary election and heard that the county recorded 14,840 registered voters and 6,560 ballots counted, including polling‑place, absentee and provisional ballots.
"The main takeaway is you have 14,840 voters, 6,560 ballots that we counted as good ballots," the County Clerk said during the canvass presentation, summarizing the county's totals and turnout (about 44.2 percent). She walked commissioners through the binders that included tabulator and hand‑count reports, the election canvas report and the new Senate Bill 440 spreadsheet the county must post online.
The clerk described routine reasons absentee ballots were rejected — missing signatures, missing or incorrect year of birth, and signature mismatches — and noted the county used the combined check of signature and birth year to detect improper submissions. She also described how a small number of ballots were misfiled as provisionals but were credited after review.
Officials addressed a tabulator separation issue that occurred during early pickup: the machine roller occasionally accepted more ballots than expected, and judges later combined materials in a way that made it difficult to isolate absentee from polling‑place ballots for a few runs. Election technicians from the vendor were called to make adjustments. The clerk said the county nonetheless reconciled accepted ballot counts against scanned records and state abstracts for sampled precincts.
Audits ordered by the state were completed in selected precincts. Where the hand audit and tabulator totals differed, the clerk said the audit result becomes the official record; commissioners were told no audited discrepancy was large enough to change the outcome of any race, and staff will forward required canvass documents to the state for certification.
The board took no action to request a recount and scheduled follow‑up bookkeeping steps and the certification submission to the Secretary of State's office.
