GOP refuses recount for committee

Votes for membership on the Salt Lake County Republican Party's central committee will not be recounted.

A formal request for a recount, which was filed last week by committee candidate Drew Chamberlain, has been denied because the stated reason for the request — barring a poll watcher from watching the ballot count — did not justify calling a recount, chairman James Evans said.

Instead, the official results in which Chamberlain fell five votes short of qualifying for the committee will stand.

Additionally, Evans said that he doubts a recount would actually quiet the complaints of Chamberlain and his supporters, many of which are perpetual vocal critics of party leaders and have a history of stirring up fights within the party.

"I'm not going to expend our limited resources trying to accommodate people who don't do the party any good," Evans said. "It will never end, and there no basis for a recount."

Although poll watchers were allowed by convention rules to watch the ballot counting for party officers, they were not allowed to watch the counting of the central committee ballots because of the almost 70 candidates for the committee, Evans said. Because no candidates had poll watchers, Chamberlain was treated fairly when his poll watcher was denied access.

Additionally, Chamberlain did not take his concern to convention delegates when he had the opportunity to move a change of the rules to allow poll watchers for the central committee ballots, Evans said. Instead, he waited until after the convention to try to make it an issue.

"There was recourse, but he didn't use it," Evans said. "Instead, he ran to the newspapers."

Chamberlain, who finished 33rd for the 32-member committee by five votes, said that the prohibition of the poll watchers was not part of the formal convention rules, and he asked for a recount with poll watchers so that he knew the counts were accurate.

"If you don't have the poll watchers, you can't trust the vote," he said.

Another problem for some convention delegates was that an unofficial list during the convention actually listed Chamberlain and three to four other central committee candidates as part of the top 32 vote getters, but the official results posted later had the order changed. Evans said that the unofficial list was distributed to some people before the spreadsheet could be sorted properly, however, and that the names were not listed in an order reflecting the number of votes received.

Chamberlain said that the unofficial list was not part of his reason for requesting a recount, however, and that it was only a lack of access for the poll watchers.

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E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com