Effort to force ballot hand-counting rejected again by court

Lawrence County Commission refused to certify ballot initiative to rid county of electronic voting tabulators

An effort to force Lawrence County to count election ballots by hand and rid the county of electronic machines was turned away Friday by a circuit court judge.

Nichole Braithwait had filed suit against the Lawrence County Commission and its commissioners after they failed to certify a petition drive that would have put the issue to a public vote. Braithwait wanted to eliminate the county’s use of electronic voting machines and electronic vote tabulators, which would require election results to be based off of hand-counted tallies.

Braithwait submitted a petition to the Lawrence County auditor with about 1,300 signatures to put the issue to voters. But the Lawrence County Commission refused to certify the issue for the ballot, reckoning that it was prohibited by law from certifying an issue that it couldn’t legally decide on its own.