While he oversaw a very successful 2021 municipal election, Seaford board of elections (BOE) chairman Bill Mulvaney supervised a badly bungled 2022 election certification.
Several concerned citizens, including representatives of two candidates, brought an obvious discrepancy in the certificate of election to the attention of Seaford city officials on Monday, April 18, 2022, the first workday after the April 16, 2022, municipal elections in Seaford.
These citizens noted that the reported total ballots cast (717) exceeded the total vote counts for mayor and one City Council seat by more than 100 votes in each race. The race for mayor produced 601 votes; the race for City Council produced 599 votes. I feel there was/is no reasonable explanation for the 100-plus vote gaps when compared with the reported number of ballots — so obvious to outside observers but ignored by seasoned members of the Seaford BOE.
Overseeing his second election, ex-Judge Mulvaney, along with three-election veteran Rick Stewart apparently made a gross error mixing up reporting of absentee “votes” and “ballots.” They wrongly inflated the number of ballots by 115 by reporting the number of votes, not ballots. Election observers have indicated that the actual number of absentee ballots collected by the city (115) had been reported to the BOE prior to completion of certification, an assertion denied by Mulvaney.
Consequently, a new public meeting of the Seaford BOE was held on April 25, 2022, at 1:30 in City Hall in Seaford to present “a revised Certificate of Election to correct the total number of ballots cast” in the April 16, 2022, Seaford municipal election.
On April 25, 2022, the Seaford BOE initially conducted a virtually useless replica of its actions to count votes on absentee ballots on election day until calls from concerned citizens for actual monitoring of the votes being reported by Chairman Mulvaney.
Then, an initial recount of 115 absentee ballots resulted in only 114 votes from absentee ballots for each race (mayor and City Council). Independent examination of each absentee ballot determined that all absentee ballots were fully marked with two votes — a problem for the BOE. Chairman Mulvaney vowed to unravel this discrepancy before adjourning the meeting.
After much back and forth between the BOE and mayoral candidate Pat A. Jones and her supporters, another recount of absentee ballots with two additional counters, including Ms. Jones, finally determined the correct number of votes for each of the four candidates from the 115 absentee ballots. The voting machine-tabulated results were not in question during this process and were then added to the results from absentee ballots.
Ultimately, 1.5 hours of questions, answers, counting and recounting produced a new certificate of election, which corrected the total ballots cast to 602 (from 717) and the number of absentee ballots to 115 (from 230). The number of votes for each candidate did not change, and the outcome of the elections did not change.
While the city of Seaford calls this snafu a mere “clerical error,” other observers have questioned and continue to question the competence of some BOE members to effectively perform critical election duties.
Consequently, at least three Freedom of Information Act requests for public information about the election/election results have been filed with the city of Seaford and/or the Delaware Department of Elections in order to try to gather information not revealed on the April 25, 2022, corrected certificate of election.
When such information becomes available, it could be used to make decisions about the need for an independent reexamination of the reported voting results, with particular attention to “absentee ballots.”
Dan Cannon
Seaford
