Three sides of a story

When an election is this close and the change is this mysterious, let's get it right.

House District 36, according to Ballotpedia. It’s home to perhaps the closest primary race in the state.

You may recall from early Wednesday morning my comment on the House District 36 race, and how I presumed it would go to a recount.

And the reason I did that was simple: I took a few moments to look up state law on recounts and found they are automatic when the contestants are less than 0.5% apart. In this case, Bryan Shupe and Patrick Smith were 11 votes apart, 1,156 to 1,145. It was an 0.48% margin, so just before I went to bed shortly afterward that’s how I reported it:

The BIG news is House District 36, where the race is too close to call between incumbent Bryan Shupe and challenger Patrick Smith, who trails by 11 votes. This is close enough for an automatic recount. (It appears all the precincts are in as well.) Then the winner has to unite the Republicans against Democrat Rony Baltazar-Lopez.

Somewhere in the middle of the night an absentee vote was found in Shupe’s favor, which kicked the margin up to 12 votes and no longer allowed for the automatic recount.

Since then, we’ve had several statements from the pair regarding the subject, and it appears one demands a recount and the other an audit:

At the conclusion of the 9/10/24 Election Day it was reported by many media outlets and the Dept. Of Elections that the final margin was 11 votes between myself and my opponent Bryan Shupe. This is less than a .5% difference and the threshold required to trigger an AUTO-recount according to Delaware election laws.

We expected an auto-recount was impending.

On the morning of 9/11/24, the number of absentee ballots for my opponent Bryan Shupe had increased from 80 to 81. That is a single vote increase.

This increased the overall vote differential from 11 votes to 12 votes - making the new margin between our votes .521% and now above the margin of error required to trigger an auto-recount.

We had expected a recount would come based on the vote differential on the evening of 9/10/24, but that now has been impeded by a single late absentee ballot being counted and therefore technically releaving (sic) the Delaware Department of Elections from the obligation to automatically conduct a recount.

Today we have filed our petition, with exhibits, to request a recount by the Department of Elections and to pause any certification of election results until representatives from BOTH campaigns are able to witness a recount and inspect the absentee ballots.

Though the Dept of Elections already told our camp and media outlets they don't intend to have a recount, we believe this recount is the most transparent way to ensure the voters of District 36 are given the election results they deserve and are entitled. And is most appropriate when margins are so razor-thin. So, they have been served our petition.

We will continue to update you all and sincerely appreciate the commitment of the 1,145 voters who cast their vote for Patrick to be their next State Representative of District 36.

In turn, the incumbent Shupe:

State Rep. Bryan Shupe Requests an Audit of His Primary Election Win

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024 -- After winning his primary election in a tight contest earlier this week, incumbent State Rep. Bryan Shupe (R-Milford South) has asked the Delaware Commissioner of Elections to audit the results.

In the race for the Republican spot on the November general election ballot in the 36th Representative District, Rep. Shupe defeated Patrick Smith by 12 votes out of 2,302 cast ballots. Under Delaware election law, an automatic recount is conducted if the margin of victory is less than one-half of one percent. The margin in this race was 0.521%, just exceeding the legal threshold.

“I have a long history of supporting proposals to improve governmental accountability and increase transparency,” Rep. Shupe said. “Today, I learned from the Delaware Department of Elections that they could not conduct an audit unless a sitting state legislator requested it. I immediately made that request. Our citizens need to be confident in the integrity and accuracy of these results. Ever since the primary results were tallied, I have repeatedly and publicly expressed my support for an audit. I’ve made good on those statements with today’s action.”

Rep. Shupe added that if his primary victory is confirmed and he is fortunate enough to win again in November, he will introduce legislation in the upcoming 153rd General Assembly to raise the automatic recount margin-of-victory threshold.

I believe Smith had also gotten the backing of State Senator Brian Pettyjohn for his recount bid. But to save the reputation of the state Board of Elections, this is the right thing to do.

Now it would be interesting to have Shupe introduce that legislation, assuming the threshold is raised to 1%. That seems like a realistic number, particularly in an election of this magnitude where a miscount or simple addition mistake could be the difference between victory and defeat.

But the other item of interest is where that one vote came from, and whether there was a little bit of funny business at the Board of Elections because someone didn’t want to do a recount - “oh gee, we found an extra absentee vote.” If it were a “late” vote that’s a problem because absentee ballots are supposed to be in prior to the close of polls at 8 p.m.

Yet yesterday the state Board of Elections made the results official. In this day and age where people don’t trust the ballot because of mysterious middle-of-the-night ballot dumps and other, shall we say, oddities, doesn’t that seem a little hasty? And maybe fishy?

They owe it to the voters to take the time and get it right. Or at least give us a detailed explanation of what went down.

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