Printer problem delays voting results
Results still unavailable at 8:25 p.m.; total counts finished by 10 p.m. in 2004.
The Nobelsville Ledger. May 2, 2006
By Diana Lamirand
Diana.Lamirand@TheNoblesville Ledger.com
 
NOBLESVILLE Election watchers at the Hamilton County Government and Judicial Center have been waiting patiently for more than two hours since the polls closed for vote tallies to come in. A printer problem in the Voter Registration Office has delayed the release of voting reports.

"They'll be done when they're done," said Kathy Kreag Richardson, Hamilton County election administrator, becoming visibly inpatient with having to answer the same question over and over as everyone stopped to ask her, "When will we have some results?"

The printer problem was fixed, Richardson said shortly after 8 p.m., but she decided to run a complete series of voting results from the county's cartridge machines before releasing any numbers. In the past, election officials printed a few results from the cartridge machines every so often to give vote-watchers a running tally. With the printer problems, however, Richardson decided to run all of the cartridge reports before releasing any.

"That's (the cartridge machine votes) the bulk of our votes," she said, explaining that the county uses 384 cartridge machines at area polling places. The county's new voting machines, the Infinity, total about 181.

By 8:25 p.m., the first vote report hadn't been released and Richardson didn't have an estimate on when it would occur.

"If they get inpatient, just remind them how it used to be until 6 a.m. before we had any results," said Steve Peachey, Cicero fire chief and machine technician for the Voter Registration Office.

In the 2004 primary, results started being announced about 6:30 p.m. The final counts were done by 10 p.m.

Call staff writer Diana Lamirand at (317) 444-5571.