Pickaway County – A Pickaway County Sheriff Candidate challenged the Pickaway County elections and demanded a recount after a discrepancy in the unofficial results and the official results were announced.
On March 28, 2024, the Pickaway County election office will met to confirm the official results from the March 19th primary elections and to review the unofficial results discrepancy. During the meeting, they explained how the erroneous addition of more mail absentee vote totals than were actually cast for all candidates. During the meeting, they explained that a memory card used to test the machines contained “test votes” was inserted into a computer and those extra votes were counted. The election office in the meeting said that they were able to identify those votes and were able to separate them from the factual votes giving them official results on March 28 which they certified. That left the Sheriff race separated by 160 votes Dale Thomas with 5,375 votes and Sheriff Matthew Hafey 5,535 votes. This according to the election office was not close enough to trigger an automatic recount.
Shortly after the official results Dale Thomas did contact the election office and requested a full recount in which he placed a deposit of 3,010 dollars, 70 dollars per precinct.
According to Director Mathew Nicklas of the Pickaway County Election Office, a recount of the Sheriff’s election was performed on April 10, 2024. In a phone interview, Nicklas told us that during a requested recount all ballots were recounted from every precinct and that Talley would officially be the new total. Nicklas reported that both parties were at the recount oversaw the process and certified that the recount was a 100% match to the official results that were reported on March 19, 2024. Nicklas expanded on the cost of the recount as an estimate, and that it could cost less to recount than what Thomas paid after overtime hours were calculated a refund from the initial payment would be rendered.
