County devises plan to correct voting results

BY JAKE BLEED  Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Posted on Wednesday, December 1, 2004

The Pulaski County Election Commission and the Arkansas secretary of state said Tuesday that they have developed a plan to transfer the county?s Nov. 2 election results electronically, eliminating the need to enter the data manually and replace the incorrect information entered earlier this month by the Pulaski County clerk?s office.

However, that plan needs the approval of the county clerk, Carolyn Staley, according to Tim Humphries, an attorney for the secretary of state?s office. When asked Tuesday, Staley said she would respond today, Humphries said. "She said she?ll think about it," Humphries said.

Steve Sipes, the Pulaski County court administrator who spokes Tuesday on Staley?s behalf, said the deal had been discussed with the commission but no conclusion reached. "A lot of times, in my experience, when something goes from computer to computer, it sure works better," Sipes said.

The plan is part of a statewide effort by the secretary of state to get correct final ballots totals. Each county has been asked to either confirm or correct previously submitted vote results. The secretary of state has given county clerks until Friday to respond.

When it came to errors, Pulaski County was not alone, but it was in a class by itself, so to speak. As of Wednesday, 14 counties said they had errors to correct, said Janet Miller, deputy secretary of state for elections and public affairs. "They have all been very minor, with the exception of Pulaski County," Miller said.

While incorrect vote totals involve errors generally so slight that correcting them will not change the election?s results, they could change history, Miller said. Political parties and analysts, members of the news media, and curious citizens are increasingly interested in vote results, Miller said, and rely on the secretary of state?s Web site for Arkansas? information. "There?s a lot of analysis going on both in-state and outside the state to look at the election," Miller said. "And we want to make sure whether it?s a political analyst from Washington, D. C., or someone from Carroll County that we have the right data." "It hasn?t affected who won but it looks bad all the way around," said Susan Inman, director of elections for the Pulaski County Election Commission, on Monday.

Staley?s approval of the data transfer plan is needed because state law requires that vote totals be passed to the secretary of state by county clerks ? not county election commissioners.

Arkansas Code Annotated 7-5-707 requires those commissioners to send voting results to the county clerk, who must "immediately transmit the results to the secretary of state through the Internet Web site interface." "It doesn?t say anything about who enters it," Humphries said.

As Humphries reads the law, the plan to electronically transfer vote totals will be legal with Staley?s approval, even if her office is not involved in the actual transfer of the information. "The purpose of the law obviously is to get the right data to our Web site," Humphries said. "Anything that facilitates that, you know, I think is going to work."

If Staley approves, the transmission would allow the secretary of state to "upload" the data onto its Web site, requiring relatively little data-entry work and little chance of error in entering the vote totals.

Those errors are evident when vote totals transmitted by the county clerk to the secretary of state are compared to those of the Pulaski County Election Commission, which compiled the final results.

The two sets of numbers should be identical but instead differ by thousands ? in some cases tens of thousands ? of votes. Sipes said those differences were due to "keying errors."

One such error was found in the vote totals for Little Rock?s Dunbar Community Center, where thousands took part in early voting before Election Day on Nov. 2. According to the election commission, U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., received 6,070 early votes at the community center and his opponent, State Rep. Marvin Parks, R-Greenbrier, received 464.

However, data on secretary of state, entered by the county clerk?s staff, gave Snyder 60,770 votes, creating a 54,700 vote difference.

Snyder won his race, according to the commission, with 97,733 votes against Parks? 53,111.

According to the secretary of state?s Web page, Snyder received 155,290 and Parks 52,874.

Those figures were entered on the secretary of state?s site by the county clerk?s office.

Of the 12 races listed on both the secretary of state?s Web site and that of the election commission, two report the same totals.

The Web-based format required by the secretary of state asked that county clerks enter the results for each precinct by hand. That meant Staley?s staff had to enter the results of each race in each of the county?s 126 precincts, eight early voting locations, and absentee votes.

The election commission?s precinct-by-precinct list of vote totals is 69 pages long.

All of the county?s voting data was entered into the secretary of state?s Web site by one employee, Kerry Wingard of North Little Rock, Sipes said.

Wingard did not respond to a phone message left at his home Wednesday.

If Staley approves of the plan to electronically transmit the vote results to the secretary of state, some of the data will still need to be entered by hand. Those will be votes for write-in candidates.

Inman said the machines used to compile the county?s vote totals record only that a write-in vote was cast, not who received the vote.

After the election, poll workers must inspect each write-in vote, Inman said, and remove those cast for inappropriate candidates. "If someone voted for Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, that?s not an appropriate write-in candidate," Inman said.