ST. CROIX — A new Board of Elections candidate for the St. Thomas/St. John District has advanced to the general election after the Elections System of the Virgin Islands certified the results of the August 3 primary election today following the counting of absentee ballots.
The Office of the Supervisor of Elections certified the primary election that included participation by only Democratic candidates following the conclusion of the canvassing of absentee ballots by the Virgin Islands Board of Elections as board members in both districts counted the remaining absentee ballots today.
The additional votes counted from the absentee ballots changed one of the candidates for the Board of Elections in the St. Thomas/St. John District who will be heading to the general election. There were no other changes to the positions of candidates vying for seats in the Senate on St. Croix, the Board of Education in the St. Thomas/St. John District, or the Board of Elections on St. Croix.
Chaneel Callwood will now be on the ballot in November as a candidate for the Board of Elections in the St. Thomas/St. John District along with Lawrence Boschulte, who secured the top spot among Board of Elections candidates in that district with 242 votes, according to the certified primary election results.
Only the top two vote-getters vying for a seat on the Board of Elections in the St. Thomas/St. John District advanced to the general election. Callwood was only one vote behind current Board of Elections member Angeli Leerdam when the unofficial results came in on the night of the primary election. She is now seven votes ahead of Leerdam after receiving 207 votes.
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A total of 101 absentee ballots were distributed for the St. Croix District, while 22 were distributed for the St. Thomas/St. John District. The absentee ballots were required to be returned to the Elections System within 10 days following the primary election.
Board members in both districts previously counted absentee ballots on August 5, totaling 87 on St. Croix and 15 in the St. Thomas/St. John District at that time. Board members counted another seven absentee ballots today on St. Croix for a total of 89, and one more in the St. Thomas/St. John District for a total of 16.
Although the process was open to the public, board member Lilliana Belardo de O’Neal pointed out that nobody took advantage to watch the members count the absentee ballots on St. Croix even though she said the board has been accused of corruption in the past.
“One of the things I want the public to know is that we always have people out there saying how bad we are,” she said. “We invite them to this process. We make it open to the public. We make it open to the media, and then nobody shows up. And then they accuse us of wrongdoing, they accuse us of corruption, and they accuse us of everything. And this, to me, is very unfair because we open it to people.”
After four board members on St. Croix opened the sealed absentee ballots and confirmed they were properly submitted, two of them inserted the ballots into a voting machine to be tallied with all the other votes cast during early voting and on Election Day.
“This is the last part of the process,” board member Raymond Williams, who serves as director of the Virgin Islands Lottery, said. “We generally canvas walk-in absentees, mail-in absentees, provisional ballots; those are the ones that we count. The supervisor’s office is responsible for Election Day, early voting; they’re responsible for those. And then we tabulate. And then we come up with one final report that is reported out to the general public.”
In addition to concluding the canvassing of absentee ballots, the Board of Elections completed an audit of the primary election by physically counting ballots cast at one of the voting centers to verify the machine tabulation matched the manual count.
The board members on St. Croix counted ballots cast at the Rotary Club of St. Croix – West voting center. As part of the process, St. Croix Deputy Supervisor of Elections Terrell Alexandre removed ballot bins from two voting machines used at the site, cut the seals, and placed the bins on a table for the board members to complete the audit.
After the board members concluded the process, the ballots were returned to the bins. Alexandre then resealed the bins and placed them back inside the voting machines for proper storage. Images of all the ballots are also stored electronically. The board members on St. Croix confirmed that 117 ballots were cast in one machine, while 146 were cast in the other.
“The numbers matched up exactly the same,” Williams said, adding that the audit is about making sure the numbers are equal when comparing the machine tabulations with the ballots counted by hand. “It just proves out again that based on the audit, that the system does work and that your votes are being counted correctly.”
Now that the primary election results have been certified, the next step in the election cycle will be the casting of lots for the position of names on the ballot for the November 5 general election. The casting of lots will take place in person at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, August 20 at the Elections System of the Virgin Islands in both districts.
“If the candidate cannot appear, they can send someone with a notarized letter informing us that they can pull the lots for that candidate, but if that’s not the case somebody from the elections office would pull the lot for them and then we’d also share that with the public and the media,” Alexandre said.
