Post-election recap
Estimated 29% preferred their votes not be counted
or chose accused gunman over Denise Harper Angel.
Dissent voiced by nearly 13,000.

Early this fall, the Kentucky Democratic Party assisted Democratic incumbent Denise Harper Angel in suing independent candidate Scott Ritcher, the Kentucky Secretary of State, and the Kentucky and Jefferson County Boards of Elections to have Ritcher disqualified from the race for District 35 State Senator.

Democrats comprise 73% of the district's electorate, virtually assuring the well-funded incumbent of re-election. As a result, many voters saw the lawsuit as unnecessary and a waste of the party's resources. Ritcher's supporters appealed to the media, called Angel's office, and hundreds signed a petition asking her to drop the suit.

The lawsuit sought to overturn the state's certification of Ritcher's candidacy, alleging that errors made in the ballot petition he filed with the state made his nomination papers invalid. After a six-week legal battle, a Jefferson County judge ruled in Angel's favor and declared Ritcher's votes would not be counted. The state subsequently refused to accept Ritcher's filing as a write-in candidate because his name was already printed on the ballot.

The Republican candidate in the race, John Albers, was arrested in August on charges of wanton endangerment after allegedly firing shots at a neighbor. Albers remained in the race despite the GOP's call for his withdrawal. He changed his party affiliation in October, thus voiding his own candidacy. This left Angel as the only person eligible to win the election.

Election Results

As a result of the court order that Ritcher's votes not be counted, the Jefferson County Clerk reported the number of votes for Ritcher as zero on election night and removed any such votes from the number of total votes cast in the race. Because of this, the actual number of votes for Ritcher and the actual voter turnout for the district is unknown. Albers' votes were tabulated normally.

Had Ritcher's votes not been removed from the "total votes" tally, simple subtraction of the other candidates' votes from the total would provide the number of Ritcher votes. Instead, results from each of the district's seventy-eight precincts must be examined in order to determine the actual number of votes cast in the district and subsequently the number of votes cast for Ritcher. This will take some time and can only be done after the official, detailed, final counts are released. Without that raw data, however, calculation of a rough estimate is still possible.

The Math Behind These Numbers

Jefferson County's voter turnout rate was 70.2%. District 35's two most demographically similar neighboring districts posted comparable turnout rates, as did State House districts that overlap the same neighborhoods. Interestingly, the turnout reported in the District 35 Senate race was just 60%, the lower percentage presumably attributable to Ritcher's votes being subtracted from the total turnout.

In District 37 to the south and west, a 65% turnout was reported, and a 72.6% rate was shown in District 19, to the north and east. The average turnout between Districts 19 and 37 is 68.8%, comparable to Jefferson's county-wide average of 70.2%. From those numbers, a few estimates can be made concerning what actually happened in District 35.

If the Jefferson County turnout rate held its same average across District 35, it would mean 44,762 people voted in the race, not the 38,232 the county reported. The balance of 6,530 excluded votes would be Ritcher's. While the number of write-in votes was negligible, it is likely that many of them went his way as well.

Ritcher, then, after being excluded from the race, and despite signs being posted in polling locations that votes for him would not be counted, finished second with 14.5% of the vote, behind Angel's 71.4%.

Despite Denise Harper Angel being the only candidate eligible to win the election, a substantial number of District 35 voters - nearly 13,000 or about 29% - preferred either that their votes not be counted or that an accused gunman was the better choice. More than twice as many voters opposed Angel's re-election than the county or media reported on election night.

Note: As of 10:30 pm Wednesday, November 5th, the Jefferson County Clerk and Kentucky Secretary of State have not posted official results. The state and county numbers differ by a few dozen votes. Please check back for more details after the official results have been released.