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Election board to discuss complaint on Monday

The Huntington County Election Board will meet Monday, April 12, with Huntington County Clerk Fran Felts  and her voter deputy to discuss a complaint filed over an altered date on a Huntington County man’s candidacy documents.

Felts had previously said the board was tentatively set to meet the following day, April 13.

 

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED: Raymond R. Tackett, of Andrews, filed the complaint Friday, April 2.

The complaint reads: “I would like to file a complaint with the Huntington county election board for them to investigate the reported incident surrounding the filing of a person for this years primary and the actions of Huntington county clerks manual changing of a date stamp on the primary form.”

Although Tackett did not specify in his complaint who the person was, he said later he was referring to candidacy papers filed by Kristopher Underwood, who plans to run for the Republican nomination to the Huntington Township Advisory Board. Underwood has served on that board for eight years.

Underwood says he filed his candidacy papers in the Huntington County Clerk’s office on Friday morning, April 19, the final day of the filing period. County Clerk Fran Felts says that when she date stamped Underwood’s paper, she noticed that the machine had stamped the date as Feb. 20 instead of Feb. 19. She used a pen to change the 20 to a 19, she says, then reset the machine to the correct date.

A March 29 posting on a Web site operated by Felts’ primary opponent, Gary Snyder, alleged that the clerk’s office “had been caught cheating on a simple candidate deadline.”

Felts says she merely corrected a machine error and admits she could have chosen a better-documented way of correcting that error.

The election board is composed of Carmen Oswalt, who serves as president, and Carol Grove. Felts, as county clerk, serves as secretary of the board and votes only if necessary to break a tie.