Election roundup: Tabulation error keeps office busy
Web site down after problem counting absentee ballots
Chronicle-Tribune. May 3, 2006
BY WHITNEY ROSS, wross@marion.gannett.com

In the early afternoon on Election Day, things were pretty calm at the Grant County Courthouse, save for a few phone calls here and there.

"Most of our problems have been people just not changing their address," said Kim Hullinger, deputy clerk in the voter registration office.

The phone also had been ringing with residents inquiring about where they are to vote with the new polling location changes.

But by 7:30 p.m., a computer glitch had candidates and voters on edge after tabulation of the votes slowed to a crawl, and d results were not available on the Grant County Web site, www.grant county.net.

After 10 p.m., there were still a handful of precincts that were unavailable for counting. It was looking to be a long night in the clerk's office and officials tried to tabulate those votes.

County Clerk Carolyn Mowery said there was some kind of an overload on their computer, which caused them to restart counting and reenter the 771 absentee ballots they had received.

"We didn't want to take a chance of something happening," she said.

They were working to get things d on the Web during the evening as the last precincts came in.

With some races very close, there still was the potential for provisional ballots to sway results. Those must be counted within 10 days, and Mowery said the office would have to investigate to see if they would be valid.

Mowery said she suspected the voter turnout to be low for Tuesday's races, as it hovered around 20 percent.

Not only were there new polling locations, but voters also had to bring picture identification with them for the first time in order to vote.

Nancy Gross, voting at Riverview Elementary School, said it probably wasn't the most convenient thing, but she dealt with it.

"If you got to do it, you got to do it," Nancy Gross said.

Her husband, Carl, didn't seem to find any fault with the new law.

"I think that's a good idea," he said.

There were no major problems with the machines during voting, Mowery said. There were a few glitches here and there, but nothing that held up voting.

"(It was) nothing that we couldn't cure. Just normal things that happened in delivery," said Charlie Williams, a voting machine mechanic.