Louisville election office sorts 23,000 handwritten ballots before Tuesday deadline
Clerk David Yates says staff are manually checking name variations to meet the Nov. 10 certification date.
By Nathan Brooks ·
Jefferson County election officials are spending the final days of the cycle verifying more than 23,000 handwritten ballots.
David Yates, the county clerk, reported that his office tracked this volume of write-in votes across all local races. Only three candidates submitted the required paperwork to become approved write-in options, a group that includes mayoral candidate Jeff Yocum. Yates noted that candidates must list multiple spelling variations on their registration forms to account for voter typos.
Yates described the manual process occurring in his office. "Beside me, we have someone who’s working it right now in real time," he said. "They’re going through, as they click over it, it lights up. They have to look and see if it’s any variation of that name." Staff check each entry against the nine name variations registered by the candidate. If the spelling matches a registered variation, the vote counts; otherwise, the worker moves to the next ballot.
Kentucky law mandates that two election workers verify the validity of each write-in vote. This requirement adds time to the counting process as clear winners emerge in most other races.
The county must certify these results to the Secretary of State’s office by Tuesday, Nov. 10.
