Close race determined

A race that was too close to call on election day was determined by yet another narrow margin after the final votes were counted.

Jesse Kharbanda won the Democratic nomination for the District 36 Indiana Senate seat with 50.3 percent of the votes. His opponent, Sean Gorman, received 49.7 percent of the votes.

The race was undecided Tuesday after a glitch in one machine at Mount Pleasant Christian Church did not allow all the votes to be counted. The machine recorded the votes, but they were not copied onto the flash drive inside the machine, said Johnson County Clerk Sue Anne Misiniec.

The church was the last vote center to close in Johnson County, and by the time the glitch was noticed by election staff, the building was already locked for the night. So officials had to get the results from the machine on Wednesday morning.

Without those votes, the tallies showed Gorman ahead, but the final total showed Kharbanda was the top vote-getter.

District 36 covers parts of White River Township and southern Marion County, so the race could not be determined until all of Johnson County’s votes were accounted for.

The senate race was the only one too close to call before the final votes were counted, Misiniec said.

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Name, voter percentage, number of votes

Sean Gorman, 49.7 percent, 4,371

Jesse Kharbanda, 50.3 percent, 4,425

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