Recount continues for St. Joseph County sheriff, big decision to come

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The recounting of the absentee ballots for the primary election of St. Joseph County Sheriff are now completed. 

Right now, Bill Redman still leads with 14 points ahead of Tim Corbett. 

All absentee ballots from the 220 precincts were recounted by hand on both Monday and Tuesday, adding up to 5,300 total votes. 

Jim Korpal, the Chairman of the St. Joseph County Recount Commission says, for the most part, nothing has changed.

"The process is very accurate. Voters are not disenfranchised," he explains. "And most votes count if they're done correctly, they count. That's what we've seen here over the past few days."

While it's a two vote difference between Election Day and the day the recount of absentee ballots concluded. 

But this doesn't mean it's the end. 

"The next step in the process would be to open up all of the machines in the warehouse here and go through the ballots, that went through the machine, in the same fashion we did with the absentee," he says. 

That decision to proceed has to be made by Corbett.

He has until June 14 to make a decision. 

So that means it still could be a very long, expensive road ahead of everyone. 

"Every ballot that we're going to count forward, are ballots that went through the machine and are still in the machine," says Korpal. "Three people couldn't do it so it would be necessary to get more counters involved."

There's about 20,000 votes inside of those machines.

If Corbett chooses to proceed, those votes would have to be recounted before June 29.