The Alexander City Outlook

The city council unanimously recertified the election results Thursday at a special called noon meeting, amending the section concerning Alexander City’s District 1 race. District 1 city council hopefuls Michael Ransaw and Bobby Tapley will now officially face off in a runoff election Oct. 9.

The new resolution explained how, following the certification of the results during a city council special called meeting Sept. 4, City Clerk Harriett Scott discovered an error in the provisional ballots: “Whereas, the provisional ballots were considered by the Tallapoosa County Board of Registrars and were duly marked by the Board with their decision to count or not to count … (and) the ballots marked ‘COUNT BALLOT’ by the Board of Registrars were counted and record by the City’s governing body. Based on this count, (the original resolution) was adopted, and whereas, subsequently it was found that four ballots that were marked ‘COUNT BALLOT’ were marked in error by the Tallapoosa County Board of Registrars due to the lack of Provisional Verification Form and these ballots caused the votes cast in District 1 to be in error.”

As previously reported in The Outlook, all four of the provisional ballots that were subsequently thrown out cast votes for Tapley.

All other sections of the recertification remained the same, declaring Bob Howard the winner in the District 3 race and Jim Spann the winner in the District 5 race. The resolution also officially declared a runoff in Districts 2, 4 and 6.

“From what I’ve found there were several mistakes made in this election, but I know none of them were intentional,” said Tapley in a written statement. “We all make mistakes in our lives. The best thing to do is learn from them and not point fingers at who was at fault.”

Ransaw was not present at the council meeting but said he felt a runoff was the fairest option.

“I’ve always said the only thing I wanted was for everything to be done fairly … for the voters and the candidates,” Ransaw said. “I hope that everyone is thinking this is the right thing to do – to let the voters once again decide the winner and not (have it decided) by some fluke. We need to make sure it’s done right.”