Counting controversy

Wednesday, August 8, 2007 1:55 PM CDT

Delays vary from touch-screen machines to paper jams

WOODROW WILKINS     The Delta Democrat Times   08 August 2007

GREENVILLE - The new touch-screen voting machines were designed to make voting simpler, if not faster.

By many accounts Tuesday, they slowed everything to a crawl when it came time to tabulate the results.

Of Washington County's approximate 30,000 registered voters, 8,897 - nearly a third - voted in Democratic primaries.
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While there were some problems at the polling places, delaying the delivery of precinct ballot boxes, things slowed considerably after polls closed.

Lurann Thomas, a Democratic executive committee member, said some of the precinct buildings opened as much as 20 minutes late for poll workers, but all were operating by the 7 a.m. start. She said several precincts reported problems that varied from computer malfunctions to paper jams in the Diebold touch-screen machines.

Thomas, who is also an election commissioner for the city of Greenville, said she will suggest a return to the old lever machines for mayoral and city council elections in October and December.

Long lines contributed to Tuesday's problem, executive committee member Bob Boyd said. The Elk's Club on East Alexander Street had the highest turnout, with 864 voters. St. James Episcopal Church was next with 760 voters.

Boyd said the lines were so long at St. James that people were voting until about 8:15 p.m., more than an hour after polls closed.
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Elsewhere, heat was a problem.

Ward Recreation Center has no air conditioning.

“It was miserable for the voters as well as the poll managers,” Boyd said. “Some just threw their hands up in the air and left.”

Then came the tally.

Throughout the evening, questions of, “Why is it taking so long?” could be heard among the crowd of candidates, party officials and news media who had gathered at the Circuit Clerk's Office to await results.

Things appeared to be going smoothly at first. With all but a few boxes in, the results from four of the county's 20 precincts were posted. Copies were printed and distributed among those present. Two more precinct reports were provided later.
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Then, everything seemed to grind to a halt.

First, the copier ran out of ink. There would be no more precinct reports.

That problem was compounded by the fact that several precinct reports were printed without results. And some precinct reports, such as Tampa Drive and Covenant Presbyterian Church, were printed at least twice.

Also, about 310 paper ballots had to be counted. These represented absentee ballots, curbside ballots for disabled or handicapped voters, and emergency ballots. The emergency ballots were given at precincts where a machine failed.

At 10 p.m., there were still no results beyond the first five precincts tabulated.

The numbers of candidates and contested races contributed to the delay in getting a countywide total. Things went more smoothly in 2006 because there were only two races on the ballot: U.S. House and U.S. Senate. It was a simple ballot with no split precincts, election officials said.

On Tuesday, there was a larger voter turnout, both parties had primaries. In Washington County alone, there were 67 different Democratic ballots and 30 Republican ballots, officials said. In addition to some statewide and countywide offices, there were several district races, including Justice Court judge, Board of Supervisors and Mississippi House of Representatives.

While Roderic Montgomery, county technician for Diebold, monitored the precinct-by-precinct tally from the voting machines, party officials inspected the paper ballots and fed them - one at a time - into an optical scanner.

Like a vending machine rejects a crumpled dollar, the scanner rejected 34 of the paper ballots. Some were kicked out because of their markings; voters were to shade in boxes by the candidates' names, but several of these ballots had check marks or X's. Others were rejected because the paper had creases from where they had been folded.

Boyd said the party would count as many of those as possible.

“We're gonna use some human judgment,” he said.

After the paper ballots that could be scanned were done, Montgomery began feeding the scanner information that had been uploaded from machines.

About 1 a.m., 18 of 20 precinct reports were made available to Chancery Clerk Marilyn Hansell and to party officials.

At that time, there was still no overall county report. Montgomery had compiled about 40 percent of the data into the scanner when it began to run out of ink, making the printout unreadable to most who were present.

Despite the lengthy delay in getting results, Montgomery said the system worked like it's supposed to.

“Everything went fine,” he said.

When the parties bring in the precinct ballot boxes, Montgomery collects the memory cards from the touch-screen computers and uploads that data into his computer. After all precincts are uploaded, a countywide report is compiled.

However, printing the precinct-by-precinct results can take several hours. The countywide report was to follow those.

As Boyd said earlier, Montgomery pointed to the number of ballots and the number of candidates. That made the lines long, causing two precincts to finish after 8 p.m., and it made the count longer, he said.

Montgomery further said the computerized process is slow because it makes sure every vote counts - none are taken away, and none are added.

“The (Nov. 6) general election should be much quicker because there will be fewer people to vote for,” he said.