Published: August 19, 2007 10:30 pm      

Table games challenge still possible in Kanawha

Gambling foes could announce Monday whether they plan to challenge the declared results from Kanawha County’s special election, which approved casino table games for Tri-State Racetrack & Gaming Center in Nitro.

But track officials — and County Commission President Kent Carper — remain adamant that opponents must foot the bill for any recount.

Friday’s nearly 12-hour canvass of the Aug. 11 referendum widened the margin in favor of table games from 33 votes to 343 votes. But that outcome — still less than one percentage point difference — was far closer than in any of the three other racetrack counties that voted on the table games question earlier this summer.

The Kanawha County Commission will hold a Tuesday meeting to accept the official results and set a 48-hour deadline for any recount request. Carper said he’s heard positive comments about Friday’s review of results in each of the county’s 175 voting precincts. But he said he could not rule out hearing the “H” word, as in “hand count.”

As in Jefferson, Hancock and Ohio counties, the local track offered to pay for the table games balloting. Kanawha officials estimate the cost to Tri-State at around $280,000. The track and its allies likely spent at least twice that amount on the “Vote Yes” advertising and marketing campaign.

Gambling opponents, including the West Virginia Family Foundation and West Virginia Values Coalition, have argued that a recount is part of an election and want Tri-State to cover it. The track disagrees, and so does Carper.

“With all due respect to them, this isn’t their election. This is the people’s election,” said Carper, who also cited a legal opinion from the Secretary of State’s office.

County election officials say the pricetag for a recount could vary, depending on how it is conducted, but would likely cost several thousand dollars.

Leaders of the anti-table games coalition could not be reached for comment Sunday, but told The Associated Press earlier that they planned to meet Monday to weigh their options.

With a much smaller budget than the track, opponents had urged voters to consider the social costs of problem gambling. They also questioned increasing West Virginia’s reliance on gambling as a revenue source.

Tri-State will pay an annual licensing fee as well as a hefty tax on table games proceeds. Shares are already earmarked for state, county and local governments. The track already provides revenues to all three from the more than 1,700 video slot machines it hosts for the state lottery. The lottery would similarly own and regulate table games.

Carper said he hopes the anti-table games coalition will turn its sights on another arm of the state gambling system: video poker machines. Made part of the lottery in 2002, nearly 160 bars and other locations offer 730 of the devices in Kanawha County alone.

“I hope they do remain together, and I hope they join me in doing something about neighborhood slots,” Carper said Sunday. “I’ll go door to door with them, irregardless of how all this turns out.”

Friday’s canvass was not a recount, but an audit of tally sheets and the number of ballots submitted by each precinct. Conducted by the county commission, the canvass also decided the fate of nearly 800 provisional ballots left uncounted by poll workers.

Most had been challenged by these workers, but a number were also absentee ballots that were postmarked in time but did not arrive in the mail until after Aug. 11.

The commissioners added 410 of these provisional ballots to the final total, rejecting the rest.

The canvass also included 534 ballots in the official tally that had been mistakenly left uncounted by workers in 10 precincts. While some were discovered by County Clerk Vera McCormick’s staff on election night, most were discovered in the days following. Nine were found in a ballot box during Friday’s canvass.

McCormick’s office did recount two precincts by hand during Friday’s audit, when their paperwork failed to add up. Between the two locations, the recount revealed more than 160 “yes” votes that had been counted by poll workers but failed to make Saturday’s unofficial tally.

Reflecting the close vote, just 87 precincts approved table games while 86 rejected them. Two precincts — one at Elk Elementary in Charleston, the other at First Presbyterian Church in St. Albans — both canceled themselves out with tie votes.

Charleston, the state’s most populous city, provided the bulk of the support for the referendum and approved the measure by 2,427 votes. The host community of Nitro, which annexed Tri-State several years ago, passed table games by just 70 votes. Cross Lanes, which handles the traffic to and from the track, rejected table games along with 21 of the county’s 34 communities.