Tabulation machine initially handed the gubernatorial election to the wrong candidate.*

... Officials have traced the problem to a data pack from the Magnolia Springs voting location. They said the vote-counting machine there printed out accurate results when the polls closed at 7 p.m. But they said the cartridge, which resembles an eight-track cassette, gave bogus figures when it was plugged into the computer in Bay Minette.

...[Mark] Kelley [general manager of Election Systems & Software] said a power surge at the precinct, static electricity or something else may have caused the glitch. He said technical experts at the company's computer lab in Rockford, Ill., may be able to determine the reason.

...He noted that at least three other counties experienced similar glitches on election night. But officials in Madison, Etowah and Barbour counties discovered and corrected the errors, in some cases by manually typing in vote totals.