Sheriffs Candidates
Dave Lankford (left) and John Wells (right) vied for the Sublette County Sheriff position. Photo by Bob Rule, KPIN 101.1 FM Radio.
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Canvassing Board
Left to Right: Cat Urbigkit, representing the Republican Party, Dave Racich, representing the Democratic Party, and County Clerk Mary Lankford and Tracey Hoover, Chief Deputy County Clerk. Photo by Bob Rule, KPIN 101.1 FM Radio.
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Write-In Candidate Dave Lankford new Sublette County Sheriff
by Pinedale Online!
November 4, 2010
The suspense is over. Write-in candidate, Dave Lankford, beat out Republican John Wells for the position of Sublette County Sheriff, the Sublette County Canvassing Board has determined.
On Tuesday, the vote count indicated John Wells won the election for Sublette County Sheriff, receiving 1008 votes. Independent Stephen Haskell received 621 votes and Mike Edison received 304. The mystery number was 1,381 write-in votes, presumably cast for candidate Dave Lankford, the only person who had mounted a write-in campaign. The county had to wait two more days for all the write-in votes to be counted and verified to get the final answer.
The Sublette County Canvass Board met on Thursday, November 4th, to certify the election. All election results are unofficial until the Canvassing Board has certified the election. The County Canvass Board was Cat Urbigkit, representing the Republican Party, Dave Racich, representing the Democratic Party, and Sublette County Clerk Mary Lankford. This meeting was open to the public. Sublette County Clerk, Mary Lankford, wife of Dave Lankford, recused herself from the ballot examination process. Tracey Hoover, Chief Deputy County Clerk. supervised the vote tallying process.
The instructions were to blacken in the oval and write in the name. Ballots that "Checked" the oval or put in an "X" were not counted as valid ballots. Voters who did not correctly follow the directions did not have their vote counted for Lankford. Voters who grossly misspelled his name also did not have their vote counted towards his tally. "Dave Kankford" did not count, but "Dave Langford" did. 1,213 voters got the name spelling and blacking-in the oval done correctly, giving Lankford enough for the win, even without the incorrectly spelled versions of his name. 101 additional spelling variations were determined to be close enough to add into the total, and had correctly filled-in ovals.
There were 71 Write-in votes that did not go towards Dave Lankford's win. Those were:
- Disqualified Dave Lankford variations (misspellings or filled out incorrectly).
- One vote for Mickey Mouse.
- Votes for Bob Armstrong, Lanny Hensley, Wes Johnston, Ridge Larson, Mike Nason, Henry Schmidt, and "Criminals".
- A few meaningless throw-away votes.
The final tally for Dave Lankford was 1310 votes, winning by 302 votes over John Wells.
Click on this link for an interview with Dave Lankford and Bob Rule at KPIN radio on Thursday. Interview (1.66MB)
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