On Tuesday evening, Clay County voters thought they knew the outcome of the Primary Race for Clay County Western District Commissioner. With 100% of precincts reporting, it appeared that Cathy Rinehart had bested Jon Carpenter with 73% of the vote and would be facing Republican Lydia McEvoy in November.

*Western Commissioner Candidate Jon Carpenter noticed errors in the Primary Election Results*

Following the election Tuesday night, a detailed review was published by the Board of Election Commissioners with election results. While reviewing that information, Western Commissioner Candidate Jon Carpenter noticed potential errors as it appeared he had received zero votes in certain precincts.

“When they [Election Commissioners] released the precinct by precinct results, and over half of the precincts had me getting zero votes, and my opponent getting 100% of the votes, we knew that was incorrect,” said Carpenter. “At this point, my understanding is that that maybe there was some problem with software with the voting machines.”

After discrepancies were verified in by the Board of Election Commissioners, a recount was conducted on Thursday, August 6th, due to tabulator errors. After recounting ballots for all county races, which took over 20 hours, the new unofficial numbers were released.

Thursday night turned into a “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment for Jon Carpenter. The newly tabulated numbers showed that Carpenter received 54.57% of the vote while Rinehart received 45.43%. This new result means Carpenter is unofficially now the Democratic candidate for Western Commissioner, and will run against Lydia McEvoy in the November general election.

The Democratic candidates for the Western District Commissioner were not the only people affected by the tabulation errors on Tuesday. New results were also tabulated in the Democratic race for Sheriff. In tonight’s recount, Wick Pickard, although running unopposed, picked up approximately 6000 votes for a total of 18,158 votes.

The final results of all races in the election are still being verified and will not be marked as official for a few days.

KPGZ News - Brian Watts contributed to this story