Mount Pleasant Write-In Candidate Filing Complaint with GAB

Sharman Turek, write-in candidate for Mount Pleasant Village President, is filing a formal complaint with the Governmental Accounting Board (GAB). She feels Mount Pleasant poll workers were not given the proper instructions about how to count write-in votes.

Specifically, Turek said she learned that some write-in votes were actually entered on a line already reserved for the other Village President candidates, either Carolyn Milkie or James Majdoch. 

"If there's a name written there even on top of a name that's been printed, then the vote has to count for the name that's been written by the resident," Turek said. "I don't think workers were told to do that."

In the April 5 election, Milkie was retained as president and Turek is presumed to have received the majority of the 627 write in votes.

Former Village Clerk/Treasurer Juliet Edmands refuted Turek's claims at the April 11 Village Board meeting.

"Our workers were told how to count the write in votes," she said. "The County canvass was also conducted and the results didn't change."

Chief Poll Inspector Stephanie Kohlhagen echoed Edmands, saying the voting machines separate ballots with connected arrows from those without connected arrows. The machines can't tell what name may have been written in, but it can determine there is a write in and those ballots end up in a different bin as well.

"Write-ins are hard," she said. "We do go with the voter's intent, like if someone wrote in 'Tu,' we assume they meant to vote for Sharman Turek and count that vote for her." Either way, workers have to pull out the ballots and count them by hand, she added.

Turek said she's pretty sure she won't come out the winner with a recount, an option she is still exploring, but she is confident she garnered more than 627 votes.

But Turek said she is also filing her complaint with the GAB because some of her campaign volunteers were harassed on election day because there were vehicles adorned with Turek campaign posters. State statute says that such signs are legal but must be no less than 100 feet from the nearest entrance to a polling station.

Paula Silich said she drove her van with a Turek sign attached to the top to Messiah Lutheran Church near the corner of Durand Avenue and Pritchard Drive. Once there, she was approached by two men who demanded she identify herself.

"I was there to remind voters that there was a write-in candidate," she said during the public comment section of the April 11 board meeting. "These two gentleman came walking down the street and without identifying themselves, asked for my name and told me that I was in violation of the law."

Thinking back on it, Silich added, she should have been the one to call the police because she wasn't violating any laws.

Tom Klamm, Turek's brother, did talk with a Mount Pleasant Police Officer who said she received a call about a campaign vehicle too close to the polling location on Fancher Road. According to Klamm, the police officer said there had been complaint calls about the sign.

"I asked her what the statute said and she said she would check," he continued. "So she took my license and went back to her squad car with lights flashing. I felt like a criminal."

But after she used a laser to measure the distance and placed a call to Village Hall to confirm the statute, Klamm said the officer was forced to leave.

"I did get a call from an officer," Edmands confirmed during a break while the board convened into closed session. "I told her that as long as the sign was 100 feet back, it was fine."

Turek said she will ask the GAB about her options for both the recount and the election day situations.