Glitches hold up results despite low turnout

By JAMES MILLER     Volusia News-Journal   October 12, 2005

 

DELAND By about 8:30 p.m., Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall had started fanning herself with a precinct list.

It didn't get too hot at the Department of Elections Tuesday night, but it wasn't a cool evening by the sea, either.

Turnout was low unofficially about 13 percent overall and glitches held up results from several precincts longer than some candidates would have liked.

The job was done by 10 p.m.

"In 1982, my first run for office, I found out the results at 4 o'clock in the morning," McFall said.

Memory cards from 14 precincts had to be driven to DeLand to be loaded into the central elections database because of computer problems or poll worker errors at the precincts. The results could have been loaded into computers at two regional libraries, but those libraries were locked due to what McFall called "miscommunication."

Ballots from a 15th precinct, in Deltona, had to be fed into a voting machine at elections headquarters because of problems with a memory card. Ballots from another precinct, in Daytona Beach, will be re-fed into a voting machine today because a hand count of ballots and precinct register signatures diverged from the electronic tally by several votes.

McFall said her staff would review to see how they might correct some of the problems they dealt with Tuesday.

But there might be little they can do to help voter turnout. Countywide, it was about 13 percent, with 21,899 voters casting ballots, according to unofficial results that included neither provisional nor unscanned ballots. Municipal elections in October 2003 drew about 22 percent of eligible voters. Two years earlier, the number was 21 percent.

All in all, McFall was still breathing a sigh of relief at the end of the night. Before taking office, she watched as her predecessor, Deanie Lowe, landed in the spotlight on several noteworthy occasions most prominently during the 2000 presidential election recount when McFall was on the canvassing board.

And prior to this Election Day, her office dealt with several hiccups, the largest coming when candidates in Daytona Beach, DeLand and Deltona withdrew, forcing county and city workers to mark through their names by hand on about 24,000 ballots.

A disabled telephone cable also forced McFall to close New Smyrna Beach Regional Library to early voting Monday morning.

There's no doubt that a supervisor's first major election can be nerve-wracking, said Flagler County Supervisor of Elections Peggy Rae Border early Tuesday.

Her first major election the 1992 presidential primary was no small affair,

"Not only was that a year of redistricting, and I was new, and we had those five (county) commission seats, but I had to run also, and I had competition," said Border, who had been appointed the year before.

To top it off, a storm temporarily knocked out the elections computer system just after the polls closed.

"I just about had a heart attack," Border said. It gets easier, she said.

Still, for McFall, wrapping up the municipal primaries will offer only a brief respite.

"We're already planning Nov. 8," she said.