Provisional ballot dispute continues

LAFAYETTE - Six bi-partisan election workers sorted through the provisional ballots.
    County Clerk Linda Phillips said she and the other workers were trying to identify any ballots where the voter claimed he or she registered at an agency such as the BMV, where that registration did not show up in computers. 
    It took the workers two hours to organize the ballots. 
    And after all was said and done, only ONE fit into the category they were searching for.

" We don't show any evidence that the voter
registered. We have no registration. There's a couple of other places I need to check. If the voter
transferred from another county under certain unique circumstances and their registration was rejected
here, they appear on a different list that we have to go look at," said County Phillips.

She said November 7th was the deadline to identify which provisional voters had registration problems and claimed to have registered with an agency. Now that that has been done, she said it's time to move on to the next step.

"Starting next week we will begin bi-partisan teams. We'll go through the ballots and
identify those that are registered those that are not. And then the ballots will be counted on Friday, valid
ballots will be counted on Friday," Phillips said.

Republican candidate for statehouse District 26 Randy Truitt released a statement that said:

  "Mr. Polles' lawsuit is trying to force the counting of ballots before the voters have opportunity to prove their provisional ballots are valid.The voters, not a lawsuit, should decide this election."

But Democratic opponent John Polles refutes that argument.

"My concern was if they didn't get started and get it done and wait til the 10 day mark
then they're going to say well we don't have time to do any of this. And these votes would not have been
counted at all," Polles said.

    Still at issue, Republicans are concerned about how Polles' attorney, Bob Bauman, got a hold of more than 20 names of provisional voters.
    Republican Election Board Member Bob Reiling said provisional names are privileged information that no one should have access to.