Wednesday, March 19, 2014

What Constitutes A Glitch In Voting?

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Last month, the Metropolitan Development Commission voted 5-3 to reject a proposed development in the 5900 block of North College Avenue that called for the demolition of two residential homes in order to make way for a mixed use development. The neighborhood's council member, Will Gooden (R), whose law firm represents developers, sided with the developer in this case over the strong opposition of neighborhood residents as he has done in every case since his appointment to the council seat vacated by Ryan Vaughn. WTHR is now reporting that another vote will be taken due to a glitch in the voting. "The commission originally rejected the plan by a 5-3 vote but one of the tallies was difficult to read so it will be reconsidered at a meeting Wednesday," WTHR reports. The video above shows the part of the proceeding where the vote was taken. The commission's clerk can be seen lingering by a couple of the commission members for a lengthy period before announcing the vote tally. The glitch must mean that someone didn't get the memo from the mayor's office on how they were supposed to vote. Adam Kirsch was confirmed at Monday night's council meeting as the latest appointee to the commission.

UPDATE: Naturally, the re-vote led to a reversal of the vote with 5 members now supporting its approval to only 2 votes against. Republican appointee Bruce Schumacher's vote supposedly was misread by the clerk at the first meeting as a "no" instead of a "yes," which would have made the vote an indecisive 4-4 vote. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I happened to see the ballots in question. They have to be signed by the members voting, and this one had part of the signature extending into the 'no' box, but also had a separate mark in the yes box. Since I don't know the definition of 'glitch', I'd tend just to describe it as a misread ballot by the Commission's Secretary, who should probably have taken the time to confirm the vote.

Anonymous said...

ps - passed 5-2 this time around