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Like Oz and McCormick, Chocolate and Vanilla in dead heat

5/18/2022

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Dogs were the clear landslide winner in Tuesday's most important election results, defeating cats nearly three to one.

Blue also defeated its closest color competitors two to one and pizza won a decisive victory in the Venango County Kid's Ballot race.

The most contested race of the day was between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. With only one vote separating the two, the automatic recount might have to be put in place, according to Venango County Director of Elections Sabrina Backer. (Or did she say that about the Oz/McCormick race?)

Perhaps if chocolate declared themself the winner things would be wrapped up by now, leaving vanilla to blame strawberry for not dropping out of the race and splitting the party. One write-in for mint-flavored ice cream seemed to indicate not every voter was happy with the choices.

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The fun activity was a way for Backer and staff to give young people accompanying the adults to the polls a chance to get a taste of an Election Day.

And some kids took it seriously, putting thought behind their vote and some writing in their choices. A couple votes had to be thrown out because a youngster voted for two candidates, which was against the rules.

"I was given strict orders from a five-year-old that her vote was (to be) counted," Backer said.

And though it was fun, Backer hopes this has long-lasting affects on voting habits. Backer and her staff are looking into ways to increase voter awareness and participation through these education initiatives.
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She said the Franklin High School used this current voting system to process and count prom king and queen votes.

And she is hoping to do more these kinds of thing in the future. 

They have a program to have a student poll worker each election and she said that she has had an uptick in people signing up to work the polls. Her work isn't done on that score, knowing there are still a large contingency of older people who have been working the polls for years.
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Backer is planning to make this a regular part of elections. "We plan to do this for the foreseeable future," she said.

About the rest of the lesser important adult ballot, Backer said the day went really well.  There was a fairly good turnout, close to 40 percent, which Backer said is pretty good for a primary.

The race for the Republican nominee for Sen. Pat Toomey's soon-to-be vacated seat is still undetermined. It will likely result in an automatic recount to determine if Brian McCormick or Dr. Mehmet Oz gets the nod.


​Venango County didn't seem divided on who should win with McCormick way ahead of Dr. Oz. McCormick took home 33.6 percent of Venango County Republican votes with Kathleen Barnett coming in second with 27.7 percent. Oz was third with 26.16 percent.
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Backer said she didn't want the kids to have to deal with politics on the Kids' Ballots. She was hoping to keep it fun and give them a positive experience. "This is hopefully going to help in getting these kids to vote in the future," she said.

And by the smile on Backer's face, despite fatigue from long hours over the election preparation and election day itself, it was fun for the election staff as well.
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NOTE: Backer said they were careful to have the Kids' Ballots purple and a different paper altogether from the regular ballots. "Even if they had been put through the machine, they would've been spit back out," she said.
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