Second election recount filed in Bannock County
Another candidate for the Idaho Senate in Bannock County is contesting the results of the election in November. Mike Saville, the senator-hopeful who ran against Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, claims the county’s vote counting machines malfunctioned.
This is the second recount request to be filed in weeks. Another Idaho Senate candidate, Tom Katsilometes, filed for a recount on claims of vote counting errors and sunshine law violations.
For Saville, the red flag was the widening gap between the winner and loser in several races between absentee voting results and the final results.
In Saville’s race, for example, he and Guthrie were neck-and-neck when absentee votes were counted. — he had 48.73 percent of the vote while Guthrie had 51.27 percent. By the time all precincts reported on election night, Saville went down to having 39.28 percent of the vote while Guthrie went up to grabbing 60.72 percent.
“I said, ‘Wait a minute,'” Saville said. “What’s the difference between the five weeks of early and absentee voting, where the races are 50-50, to where the election voting is so far off.”
Having worked with similar machines at computer hardware company IBM, Saville believes the firmware of the machines were compromised. The firmware is the software coded into the machines.
“I had to really dig deep into those kinds of problems and a lot of times it was things like firmware,” he said.
The Bannock County elections office said the vote counting machines did as they should. Julie Hancock, the elections administrator, said three sets of test ballots are put through the machines before election night to ensure all the upgrades and maintenance work is up to par.
“We make sure they’re spot on. We do it ourselves and then we do it publicly with witnesses,” Hancock said.
Saville only has an issue with the machines and not the county’s election staff. A recount is scheduled for Saville and Katsilometes on Thursday in Bannock County and Power County.
Also, since Katsilometes filed at the state Senate level, the Senate will also be making a decision on the second day of the 2017 legislative session. Evidence related to the complaint is being collected until Dec. 29.
