ST. GEORGE — While the canvass of the House District 72 race recount maintained Joseph Elison as the winner Tuesday with a handful of additional votes, the matter is far from settled in the eyes of Willie Billings and his supporters.

“Prove to us that those machines are accurate by doing a hand count,” Billings said Tuesday following the Washington County Commission meeting where he disputed the recount results presented by the Washington County Clerk/Auditor’s Office. “Even though it (the results) might not be exactly the same, it will come out in the margins and there will be a groundswell of support for the elections, and we’ll trust in the process and trust in the machines.”

Initial results of the primary race for House 72 had Elison lading Billings by just seven votes. As the results were within 0.25% of each other, Billings was able to call for a recount.

Billings’ argument stems from the results of a recount audit conducted by the Clerk/Auditor’s Office on Monday that the public was invited to attend. A similar audit was conducted the Friday following the primary election. The audit takes a random selection of ballots and re-runs them through what equates to an advanced Scantron machine while also being visually checked by county staff for any irregularities.

In Monday’s audit, approximately 1,000 random ballots were selected for review. According to the numbers taken from the audit, Billings claims he actually has a 20% lead over his opponent and has subsequently demanded an additional recount to either prove or discount this. Moreover, he wants it to be a hand recount because of what he described as the “widespread distrust” people in the county have for voting machines.

Washington County Clerk/Auditor Susan Lewis recently said hand counts are subject to human error and bias, and therefore are not considered the best of ways to conduct a recount.

“This is not about winning. Do I want to win? Absolutely,” Billings said. “But the point is that we get the truth and build faith and confidence in the election process.”

The County Commission and Clerk/Auditor’s Office counter Billings’ claims by saying there’s a disconnect in understanding between the actual recount and the audit and the purpose of each. An explanation for the difference in the overall results and audit results was also given.

The purpose of the recount was just that – the review and re-run every ballot and envelope and make sure they match the original count, County Clerk/Auditor Susan Lewis said. As this is the first time ever that Washington County has ever conducted a recount, it was not exactly something the Lewis’ office was initially prepared for or used to. They also lacked the capacity to recount the specific precincts that made up House 72 and had to conduct a recount of the entire primary election which consisted of over 34,000 ballots.

In the end, the recount landed Elison an additional four votes over Billings.

As for the accompanying audit, its purpose is not to serve as a random sampling of the recount results but rather to confirm the accuracy of the process, Lewis said.

“A recount was not the purpose of the audit,” she told the County Commission and repeated again when speaking to St. George News.

While Billings says the audit should be considered an accurate sampling of the overall election results, both Lewis and the commission argue it is not due to how people voted in House 72’s precincts.

Some precincts were overwhelmingly in favor of Billings or Elison, while others showed a razor-thin lead of one candidate over the other.

“It’s my opinion we had two very strong candidates and that’s why it’s so close,” County Commissioner Victor Iverson said.

Prior to the commission approving the recount results, Deputy County Attorney Devin Snow noted a letter from the legal firm of Kirton McConkie had been sent to the commission requesting the commission not approve the results.

State law doesn’t grant the commissioners the ability not to approve the results, Snow said. “You don’t have that discretion. You don’t have the discretion to push things off because you feel like it.”

As for the letter and the reasons it stated approval of the results should be stalled, Snow said he found it to be “without merit.”

“There’s nothing in this letter that persuades me that the canvass shouldn’t go forward,” he said.

The author of the letter, attorney Timothy Anderson, stood up among the crowd packed into the commission chambers and was granted a moment to speak by the commission.

“We believe there is an anomaly that occurred in the recount the other day,” he said, adding the totals garnered from the audit results showed a 60/40 split between Billings and Elison. “That is wholly inconsistent with the close results that appears to have happened.”

Ultimately, Iverson said the commission saw no evidence justifying putting adopting the recount numbers on hold or asking the Clerk/Auditor’s Office to conduct another recount.

Billings warned the commissioners that they were fanning the flames of dissent by not agreeing to a hand recount.

“There is mass dissent across Washington County and the country of lack of voter faith and trust in our election system and specifically in machines,” Billings said to a sudden burst of applause from his supporters in the audience. “I’m OK with losing this election. I’m not OK with leaving the numbers as they are.”

There was one or two outbursts from the crowd as the commissioners spoke of their faith in the voting process and their trust in the Clerk/Auditor’s Office. At one point an agitated woman repeatedly said, “Who cares?” until getting up to leave the room.

After the commissioners earned a chorus of “boos” from some in the crowd when they unanimously voted to approve the recount results, Billings and his supporters left the commission chambers and gathered in the foyer.

Following the meeting Billings told St. George News he plans to pursue another recount with the aid of Anderson, who he hired to take on the case.

Snow told St. George News there presently is no process in play in state law that will allow for a another recount. Rather, any move to seek a new recount may have to be pursued through the courts, he said.

“I still see no legal basis for a second, a third or a 50^th recount,” Snow said.

In the wake of the recount process, Lewis and Melanie Abplanalp, the county elections clerk, told the commission that their office needs a new mail-sorting machine that will greatly aid in future election counts and possible recounts.

The machine, which is estimated to potentially run $200,000-plus, will help sort mail-in ballots by city, zip code and precinct, Abplanalp said.

“Sorting ballots from 105,000 registered voters in the county by hand is not very efficient,” she said. “We’re looking for a piece of equipment that will do that automatically.”

At the end of the day, Commissioner Adam Snow said the county wanted the same thing Billings and his supporters did – faith and trust in the election process and finding the best way to ensure that.

“I don’t know that hand-counting is always going to be the bastion of perfection,” he said. “I do care about accuracy. I care about accuracy in the count … In a call for utmost transparency let’s provide whatever we can legally so that the citizens can look and say, ‘Yep, regardless of how it turned out, it was fair.’”

The commissioners also lauded Lewis’ staff for the work they did on the recount. Lewis and members of her staff who live in House District 72 recused themselves from the recount in order to avoid any potential conflicts of interest in the matter.

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