DAVENPORT, Iowa — Pleasant Valley schools will have a new board member after the Scott County Board of Supervisors rejected a re-canvass of the election results for District #6. A re-canvass is a second verification of the voting count.
In the original Nov. 7th election, Jameson Smith won with 256 votes — just six more than incumbent Tracey Rivera's 250 votes, with 10 votes being other write-in candidates.
Rivera asked for a recount, and those results were delivered to Scott County Auditor Kerri Tompkins on Dec. 1. The county board met on Dec. 4 to approve the re-canvass of those results.
"We believe that this resulted in a tie [and] would then have the Board of Supervisors draw on who would be the winner," county attorney Kristina Lyon explained to the board.
At least two board members said they received copies of emails from the recount team, in which at least one recount member said some ballots were not marked correctly but still counted. Board member Jean Dickson read that email at the meeting: "Quote, 'Ms. Thompkins, I've read the emails on this matter. We counted by hand over 20 boxes of ballots. Some of the write-in votes did not have the ovals filled in,'" Dickson read.
Despite being the incumbent, Tracey Rivera had to be voted as a write-in option on the ballot. The email explained that on some ballots, the bubble next to the write-in line was not filled in properly, but Rivera's name was written correctly, and that some of these such ballots were counted anyway.
"We cannot accept voter fraud and those things going on. This is a dress rehearsal for the real thing next November," county board vice-chair John Maxwell said. Maxwell was one of the board members who voted to reject the re-canvass in a 3-2 vote. The board came to its decision despite Lyon describing some legal consequences the board could face.
"Potential contest, or if anybody wanted to bring anything up with the district court, file some type of lawsuit," Lyon said.
Thompkins said the original count where Jameson Smith won by six votes will now stand as the result.
The incumbent candidate Tracey Rivera joined the school board in Oct. 2022 to fill a vacant seat until the election.