(July 14, 2016) Those closest to the election operations in Ocean Pines insist there are no cauldrons set up inside the room where, each year, the elections committee and a handful of support staff count ballots for the annual board of directors vote.
No livestock are sacrificed; no brooms are ridden and no spells are cast. According to those who have been involved during the last several years, hardly a pointy black hat is present in the room when the votes are processed.
Last year, 6,707 ballots were counted. The year before, that number was 6,676. Elections Committee Chairman Bill Wentworth, who oversaw both counts, said they were done in the same manner, following the procedures set forth in Resolution M-06, one of the many governing documents of the Ocean Pines Association.
Wentworth has been on the committee for six years, and has been chairman during the last two elections.
Each time, he said an independent representative from Ace Printing & Mailing picks up ballots from the Ocean Pines post office, along with those deposited in the ballot box inside the police station, by 5 p.m. on the day of the voting deadline.
“When he delivers the information to us, he has already taken all of the ballots out of the envelopes, separated the ballots from the envelopes, and organized the envelopes by their property identification information,” Wentworth said.
For about the last decade, that part of the operation has been performed by Thom Gulyas, a Berlin Councilmember and owner of Ace Printing.
“What I do is I make sure there aren’t any duplicates. It would take a lot for somebody to duplicate the Scantron card, the envelope, and then get the coding off the back,” Gulyas said.
“We put the presort sequence on the back of the envelope. So, say I get back two 5,001’s. If I get two of those, one them is a duplicate, and what I do is I pulled those aside and, more than likely, the committee would disallow both of them,” he continued. “That being said, I have never had a duplicate — never. No one has ever tried to game the system, thank God.”
Occasionally, he said things do get wonky with the U.S. Postal Service, although those incidents are generally minimal and are often resolved.
“You are dealing with the post office, so you’ve got to take it for what it’s worth,” Gulyas said. “People claim that they don’t receive [a ballot], and that’s fine. They give me a list of a dozen or so where they’ve actually mailed out a duplicate package to that person, and then we know who they are, I find them in my system, and then if an envelope comes back and I have a duplicate I put those off to the side and let the committee handle it.”
According to Gulyas, he stays in the room with the committee for “about 15 or 20 minutes” after delivering the physical ballots.
“Just enough to answer any questions in case they say, ‘hey Thom, why did you pull this envelope off to the side,’ or if we get a ballot that has everything scratched out and has a nasty message on it and they want to vote for Donald Duck — you do get some dumb stuff like that, believe it or not. That’s to be expected with any election anywhere. It’s the nature of the beast,” he said.
Once the questionable ballots are set aside, the remainder are then fed through a Scantron machine by one of the committee members, with an independent contractor, Newark-based BDK, Inc., tabulating the results and operating the machine. Last year, Wentworth fed the physical ballots into the machine.
“While the ballots are being scanned, the IT guy is tabulating them out,” he said. “As the ballots are being tabulated, the IT equipment will kick out a ballot that’s not being read.”
Reasons a ballot cannot be read have included, according to Wentworth, the voter selected more than the allowed number of candidates, the ballot was illegible and, occasionally, as Gulyas mentioned, “they wrote vulgar things across the ballot.”
Wentworth said there were 37 ballots rejected by the machine last year. To put that into perspective, that represents 0.005 percent of the total vote.
In 2015, two directors were elected from a pool of seven. The third place finisher was 285 votes shy of second place. In 2014, two of five candidates were elected, and third place was 346 votes short.
Ballots that are rejected by the machine are then reviewed by all of the members of the elections committee. Wentworth said the committee “always tries to err on [the side of] counting the ballot.”
“Most of them are people that just don’t follow directions,” he said.
Of the 37 ballots that had to be counted manually last year, 31 were not counted in the final tally. Two were rejected because they were mailed in “improper envelopes,” which is against the rules, two were rejected because multiple ballots were mailed in a single envelope, five were completely blank, and 22 voted for more than the allowed number of candidates.
Fourteen duplicate ballots were also sent in.
“A duplicate ballot is something where, a dog ate the ballot and we processed and made sure they got another one, and stamped ‘duplicate’ on it so if it came up, obviously they weren’t going to be counted [twice],” Wentworth said.
When all the tabulations are completed, the IT professional prints out two copies. Wentworth said those results immediately go into his trusty briefcase, where they remain sealed until the following morning, when the results are publicly announced.
“I share that information with no one — no one on the committee. I don’t even share it with my wife,” Wentworth said. “I don’t tell anybody what the results are. All kinds of people try to get the information out of me and I say, ‘show up to the annual meeting and you’ll find out,’”
At the annual meeting, held on the following morning each year inside the community center, the elections committee chair signs both copies and gives them to the general manager and the board president to certify.
Wentworth said the possibly for impropriety in the Ocean Pines election is “none whatsoever.”
“It’s not any one person making any decisions,” he said. “The committee will review any contested ballots together, and we can usually figure out what it is. We always err on the side of making the vote count.”
In Gulyas’ opinion, the system that’s in place in Ocean Pines is “1,000 percent strong.”
“There’s no way — no way — that anybody’s going to be able to pull anything,” he said. “I’ve known these people [at BDK] for years. They’re above reproach. They’re just some of the most honest folks you could ever meet. And they don’t own property in the Pines [and] I don’t own property in the Pines, so we don’t have a horse in the race. We just don’t.
“As far as the committee, they’re paid zero dollars and they take their jobs very seriously. Every single committee that I’ve worked with going back [more than 10 years] takes their job seriously,” Gulyas continued. “These guys have their game together — they really do.”
The ultimate assurance for residents of Ocean Pines, however, may be the fact that the ballots are kept for one year after each election in a lock box inside the administration building, and are accessible to any Ocean Pines homeowner.
“All they have to do is call up and make an appointment,” Wentworth said. “To my knowledge, it’s only happened one time, and it was a candidate who wanted to look at the count in a close election.”
The investigation, however, did not last long.
“They started going through the process, and about a half hour in they said ‘uncle,’” Wentworth said.
No livestock are sacrificed; no brooms are ridden and no spells are cast. According to those who have been involved during the last several years, hardly a pointy black hat is present in the room when the votes are processed.
Last year, 6,707 ballots were counted. The year before, that number was 6,676. Elections Committee Chairman Bill Wentworth, who oversaw both counts, said they were done in the same manner, following the procedures set forth in Resolution M-06, one of the many governing documents of the Ocean Pines Association.
Wentworth has been on the committee for six years, and has been chairman during the last two elections.
Each time, he said an independent representative from Ace Printing & Mailing picks up ballots from the Ocean Pines post office, along with those deposited in the ballot box inside the police station, by 5 p.m. on the day of the voting deadline.
“When he delivers the information to us, he has already taken all of the ballots out of the envelopes, separated the ballots from the envelopes, and organized the envelopes by their property identification information,” Wentworth said.
For about the last decade, that part of the operation has been performed by Thom Gulyas, a Berlin Councilmember and owner of Ace Printing.
“What I do is I make sure there aren’t any duplicates. It would take a lot for somebody to duplicate the Scantron card, the envelope, and then get the coding off the back,” Gulyas said.
“We put the presort sequence on the back of the envelope. So, say I get back two 5,001’s. If I get two of those, one them is a duplicate, and what I do is I pulled those aside and, more than likely, the committee would disallow both of them,” he continued. “That being said, I have never had a duplicate — never. No one has ever tried to game the system, thank God.”
Occasionally, he said things do get wonky with the U.S. Postal Service, although those incidents are generally minimal and are often resolved.
“You are dealing with the post office, so you’ve got to take it for what it’s worth,” Gulyas said. “People claim that they don’t receive [a ballot], and that’s fine. They give me a list of a dozen or so where they’ve actually mailed out a duplicate package to that person, and then we know who they are, I find them in my system, and then if an envelope comes back and I have a duplicate I put those off to the side and let the committee handle it.”
According to Gulyas, he stays in the room with the committee for “about 15 or 20 minutes” after delivering the physical ballots.
“Just enough to answer any questions in case they say, ‘hey Thom, why did you pull this envelope off to the side,’ or if we get a ballot that has everything scratched out and has a nasty message on it and they want to vote for Donald Duck — you do get some dumb stuff like that, believe it or not. That’s to be expected with any election anywhere. It’s the nature of the beast,” he said.
Once the questionable ballots are set aside, the remainder are then fed through a Scantron machine by one of the committee members, with an independent contractor, Newark-based BDK, Inc., tabulating the results and operating the machine. Last year, Wentworth fed the physical ballots into the machine.
“While the ballots are being scanned, the IT guy is tabulating them out,” he said. “As the ballots are being tabulated, the IT equipment will kick out a ballot that’s not being read.”
Reasons a ballot cannot be read have included, according to Wentworth, the voter selected more than the allowed number of candidates, the ballot was illegible and, occasionally, as Gulyas mentioned, “they wrote vulgar things across the ballot.”
Wentworth said there were 37 ballots rejected by the machine last year. To put that into perspective, that represents 0.005 percent of the total vote.
In 2015, two directors were elected from a pool of seven. The third place finisher was 285 votes shy of second place. In 2014, two of five candidates were elected, and third place was 346 votes short.
Ballots that are rejected by the machine are then reviewed by all of the members of the elections committee. Wentworth said the committee “always tries to err on [the side of] counting the ballot.”
“Most of them are people that just don’t follow directions,” he said.
Of the 37 ballots that had to be counted manually last year, 31 were not counted in the final tally. Two were rejected because they were mailed in “improper envelopes,” which is against the rules, two were rejected because multiple ballots were mailed in a single envelope, five were completely blank, and 22 voted for more than the allowed number of candidates.
Fourteen duplicate ballots were also sent in.
“A duplicate ballot is something where, a dog ate the ballot and we processed and made sure they got another one, and stamped ‘duplicate’ on it so if it came up, obviously they weren’t going to be counted [twice],” Wentworth said.
When all the tabulations are completed, the IT professional prints out two copies. Wentworth said those results immediately go into his trusty briefcase, where they remain sealed until the following morning, when the results are publicly announced.
“I share that information with no one — no one on the committee. I don’t even share it with my wife,” Wentworth said. “I don’t tell anybody what the results are. All kinds of people try to get the information out of me and I say, ‘show up to the annual meeting and you’ll find out,’”
At the annual meeting, held on the following morning each year inside the community center, the elections committee chair signs both copies and gives them to the general manager and the board president to certify.
Wentworth said the possibly for impropriety in the Ocean Pines election is “none whatsoever.”
“It’s not any one person making any decisions,” he said. “The committee will review any contested ballots together, and we can usually figure out what it is. We always err on the side of making the vote count.”
In Gulyas’ opinion, the system that’s in place in Ocean Pines is “1,000 percent strong.”
“There’s no way — no way — that anybody’s going to be able to pull anything,” he said. “I’ve known these people [at BDK] for years. They’re above reproach. They’re just some of the most honest folks you could ever meet. And they don’t own property in the Pines [and] I don’t own property in the Pines, so we don’t have a horse in the race. We just don’t.
“As far as the committee, they’re paid zero dollars and they take their jobs very seriously. Every single committee that I’ve worked with going back [more than 10 years] takes their job seriously,” Gulyas continued. “These guys have their game together — they really do.”
The ultimate assurance for residents of Ocean Pines, however, may be the fact that the ballots are kept for one year after each election in a lock box inside the administration building, and are accessible to any Ocean Pines homeowner.
“All they have to do is call up and make an appointment,” Wentworth said. “To my knowledge, it’s only happened one time, and it was a candidate who wanted to look at the count in a close election.”
The investigation, however, did not last long.
“They started going through the process, and about a half hour in they said ‘uncle,’” Wentworth said.