Sloppy paperwork, bad math blamed for late election results

Associated Press

ST. LOUIS - Sloppy paperwork and bad math were blamed for St. Louis being the last jurisdiction to report its final results to the state in Tuesday's primary election.

Final results from the city weren't reported until 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, more than four hours after St. Louis County reported its results.

The St. Louis Board of Elections said workers made counting errors at individual precincts. Officials vowed changes would be made before the next election.

"The issue is not voter fraud," said Gary Stoff, the board's Republican director. "The issue, if you will, is sloppiness and not doing the paperwork properly."

Derio L. Gambaro, chairman of the election board, said the entire process would be reviewed before the general election in November.

"We are not going to be there until 3:30 in the morning in November," Gambaro said.

Gambaro said the city announced preliminary results at 7 p.m. Tuesday and d them a few hours later. Close to midnight, somebody noticed problems.

Election officials discovered that in about 15 percent of the city's roughly 200 precincts, there were discrepancies between the number of ballots tabulated by voting machines and the number counted by election judges.

Election officials discovered adding and subtracting errors by poll workers. Stoff said some workers did not properly account for spoiled ballots. Other times they counted a packet as containing 50 ballots when it held 100.

James P. O'Toole, the board's Democratic director, said officials have already taken steps to ensure there is not a repeat of the 2000 election, when city voters were turned away after workers could not verify their eligibility. That led to officials agreeing to federal oversight of elections.

This week, the city and others sued Secretary of State Matt Blunt to permit voters to cast ballots two weeks before the Nov. 2 election.

A spokesman for Blunt, Spence Jackson, said the problems Tuesday in St. Louis shows that voting early would be a problem. Jackson said the city shouldn't be looking for a longer election period when it can't effectively manage one day.

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