The canvass of the ballots from last week’s special USD 112 election Tuesday morning yielded no changes to the outcome. The Barton County Commission, gathered as the Board of Canvassers, met in the County Clerk’s Office in the old JC Penney building to review the provisional ballots.

A provisional ballot is used to record a vote when there are questions about a given voter’s eligibility. With this special election, there were 10 such ballots with most of the voters having moved within the county or had married and changed their names.

Except for one voter who was not registered in the district, all the other votes were counted. The final vote tally was 18 yes votes to 651 no votes.

Yes votes were in favor of disorganizing USD 112, something sought by supporters of Wilson High School which is set to be closed at the start of this school year. The no votes were to keep the district intact.

“This felt sort of weird for us,” County Clerk Bev Schmeidler said. “We only had one polling place. We kept thinking we were forgetting something.”

But, the voter turnout was over 74.42%, she said. “This was an emotional election” with the possible fate of a school on the line.

With such a landslide margin, “there is no way this is going to change the outcome,” commission Chairman Shawn Hutchinson, District 3, said.

Commissioners zipped open the ballot envelops, reviewed the contents and handed them to Schmeidler. She then fed all the valid ones through the voting machine.

“You did a good job,” said District 5 Commissioner Donna Zimmerman. A former county clerk herself, she understood the work involved in an election.

“This was pretty simple and straight forward,” Schmeidler said. Polls closed at 7 p.m. and they were done before 8:15.