UPDATE: As of Friday, November 09 at approximately 11 A.M., Election Commissioner Conni Gracey told KCNI/KBBN that the reason for the discrepancy in counts was when the volunteers were counting the write-ins on Tuesday, there were those that were missed in the total. When the canvasing board came in on Thursday to check the numbers, the votes were there on the ballot, but had been missed being in the total count.
Until the canvasing board comes in to finalize the votes all numbers beforehand are unofficial.
Also to issue a recount, the votes must be within 1% or less of each other.
City Administrator Brent Clark told KCNI/KBBN on Friday morning that, “We’re trying to figure out how there was that large of a number of swing of votes. We don’t care about the results. We had a historic turnout for a midterm election.” Brent continued saying, “Now we just have to make sure that the election process was handled properly and that every vote was counted the correct way and making sure the people’s voices were heard.”
KCNI/KBBN received the 2018 General Election results at 4:00 P.M. on Thursday, November 8, after the results were made official. Jonathan Berghorst, who was trailing incumbent Mayor Cecil Burt, Jr. after election day, has overtaken Cecil after the counting of the provisional and absentee ballots. Berghorst finished with 535 votes while Burt finished with 508 votes.
KCNI/KBBN reached out to Broken Bow City Administrator Brent Clark who was not aware of the changes and said he had checked with Conni Gracey late Wednesday afternoon but had not received the official totals on Thursday.
KCNI/KBBN also contacted Broken Bow City Attorney Jason White for a statement. Jason said the city will be looking into what happened to change the unofficial count.
The final voting numbers for City of Broken Bow Mayor as of 11/08/2018 at 4:00 PM are as follows:
Jonathan Berghorst- 535
Cecil Burt, Jr.- 508
Tony Snyder- 110
Also, after finishing counts of absentee and provisional ballots, some of the township board elections resulted in ties. Our news team will also find out how those ties will be resolved
