October 2022
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OCEAN PINES
PROGRESS THE OCEAN PINES JOURNAL OF NEWS & COMMENTARY
COVER STORY
Vote recount confirms winners in OPA election, but votes of some owners were not counted Earlier discrepancies were resolved by second of two recounts conducted by the Elections Committee, but issues remain and some OPA directors are unhappy with way the process unfolded By TOM STAUSS Publisher hough hardly anyone who has delved into the results of this summer’s Board of Directors election is convinced that vote totals conclusively reflect the will of the voters, it appears that a hand recount of votes that occurred Sept. 30 will be the final word on the 2022 balloting. Steve Jacobs, Stuart Lakernick and Monica Rakowski after the recount by the Elections Committee remain as the top three finishers in the contest, thereby winning three-year terms on the Board. The results are fraught with oddities, with 920 fewer votes counted in the Sept. 30 recount than had been cast in the scanner-assisted count of paper ballots in early August. [See sidebar elsewhere on this page.] Unless an aggrieved owner of multiple properties or unsuccessful candidate decides to take the OPA to
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court, challenging the latest results and asking for a new election, these recounted ballots will be the official revised election results. Even if a court challenge is filed, and there is no indication it will be, there’s no guarantee or even a likelihood that a court would order a new round of voting. The basis of a lawsuit should someone want to spend the money to hire an attorney would be the emerging, unchallenged fact that owners of multiple lots who received a paper ballot and filled it out for one, two or three candidates did not have those ballots “weighted” to reflect the number of lots owned. To have the opportunity to cast multiple ballots, these owners would have needed to request multiple ballots, and some did, but apparently there’s no information available on the number of additional paper ballots that were issued. To Page 5
Final dueling arguments in Janasek case ~ Page 31
appetizers everywhere
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Some oddities in the Sept. 30 vote recount By TOM STAUSS Publisher omething very odd happened in the hand recount of ballots from the 2022 Board of Directors election conducted by the Elections Committee Sept. 30. There were a staggering 920 fewer votes counted in the recount than were counted in the scanner-assisted count in August, a reduction from 9,053 to 8,133 total votes cast. The initial explanation given for the huge disparity in votes cast was machine error, errant programming in the scanning software used to count paper ballots. In contrast, there has been no indication that the off-site software used to count electronic votes in this year’s hybrid voting system malfunctioned. “This hand count ... verified that the tabulation program needs to be investigated to identify the reason for the reporting an excess of votes, above the maximum number of paper ballots, that were scanned on Aug. 11,” said Carol Ludwig, committee chair, in a report posted on the Ocean Pines Association Website Oct. 1 “The failure to verify the information generated by the tabulation program resulted in an inaccurate report of results by the Elections Committee chair,” she said. To Page 3
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INSIDE THIS EDITION
Ocean Pines ............. Pages 1-33 OPA Finances ........... Pages 34-35 Worcester County .. Pages 36-38 Lifestyles .................... Pages 39-41 Opinion ...................... Pages 43-44 Captain’s Cove ......... Pages 45-63