Centreville elects new mayor after election canvass breaks tied vote

CENTREVILLE, Ala. (WBRC) - The city of Centreville has a new mayor-elect one week after the race ended in a tie.

Barry Cooner defeated incumbent mayor Mike Oakley by just two votes after an election canvass Tuesday.

Ten provisional ballots were unsealed from inside an election box in Centreville’s city council chambers during the public count. However, only four of those ballots were deemed legal by the board of registrars prior to the meeting, so only those four ballots were counted.

After some confusion about individual ballots not being sealed within their own envelopes inside the election box, it was determined that all four provisional ballots would still count since the election box itself was properly sealed.

Three of the four ballots went to Cooner, giving him 329 votes to Oakley’s 327.

Oakley’s attorney, Joel Blankenship, says Oakley intends to ask for a recount.

Blankenship says that the recount is not meant to question the legitimacy of the election, but to ensure that voters’ voices were heard in a race that was tight to the very end.

“It’s more looking along the lines to make sure that the voters’ intent was reached,” says Blankenship.

“If they accidentally, for instance, checked a box instead of bubbled in, or otherwise indicated who they intended their vote to be for but the machine didn’t scan and count that. That’s the reason for this, is to put that extra check and balance on there to make sure our elections are done correctly.”

Blankenship adds that while he has questions about how the four provisional ballots were decided to be legal of the ten total in the election canvass box, he sees no reason to suspect that any of the unsealed ballots were tampered with.

“We have been reassured here today that those ballots were properly placed in the box at the end of the election, that they were properly sealed,” says Blankenship.

“Until I have more information that disputes that, we’re going to believe that the election went off as proper. The real question we would look into here is, why were the other ballots not counted?”

“Well I think that, you know, actually because this was an open meeting, it wasn’t held in a back room, people could see the actual envelopes being opened and the votes read,” says Mitch Kemmer, Centreville’s city attorney. “And that’s, you know, that’s democracy.”

Oakley has 48 hours to request a recount. Blankenship anticipates that the recount will be completed within one week.

If the results of Tuesday’s count stand, Cooner will take office in the first week of November.

Meanwhile, Centreville’s District 3 city council seat will be heading for a runoff on Sept. 23 between Linda Lawrence and Reese Lee.

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