Hudson County vote count hits major snag   (NJ)

Ken Thorbourne/The Jersey Journal     04 November 2008

The system of counting votes at Hudson County Clerk's office has gone haywire tonight.

According to County Clerk Barbara Netchert, the way things were supposed to work is that local town clerks were supposed to be able put the cartridges from the electronic voting machines into a reader and the information would be sent via computer to her office.

But the readers in several municipalities, including Bayonne, Union City, Secaucus, and West New York aren't working, Netchert said about 9 p.m.

So, the plan now, is to have election officials from each town physically bring the cartridges into the County Clerk's office on Newark Avenue in Jersey City, she said.

What this does is push officials back several hours.

In Bayonne, for example, Netchert had hoped to have results of the mayor's race by now. But given this new development, she didn't expect to have an official count until 11 p.m., she said.

Netchert said her office's computer experts visited all the local clerks' offices last week and the readers were working.

But now that it's game day, the system has collapsed.