By Carol McIntire and
Don Rutledge
November 10, 2009
Were you left searching to find Carroll County election results Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning?
If so, you were not alone. Results were hard to come by and were late coming. It was obvious The Free Press Standard (FPS) readers were searching for results as the paper's website received 3,121 hits Tuesday night and 7,701 on Wednesday.
The FPS staff posted updates as they became available from the Carroll County Board of Elections. A count of votes cast on electronic voting machines in the 26 precincts in the county was complete by just after 11:30. That left the Board of Elections staff with 1,240 absentee ballots to count (all were cast on paper ballots) as well as the write-in-votes for Carrollton Council. Elections Board Chairman Glenda Carter said before the election the process of counting the write-in votes would be "time consuming." Indeed it was. It was after 6:30 a.m. Wednesday when the FPS received the unofficial certified election results, too late to update the results prior to the 7 a.m. printing deadline.
The early morning time is the latest time FPS employees can remember receiving results.
"I've been covering elections for 46 years and this is the longest we have had to wait for results," said Don Rutledge, FPS associate editor. "And I was here back in the days when there were no machines and all votes were hand counted."
The FPS staff, armed with questions and concerns from staff and readers, met with Carter, Board of Elections Director Christine Vernier and Board Member David Reece.
During that meeting last Thursday morning, the FPS staff was told the hand counting of write-in votes was the most time consuming.
When officials were asked how many write-in votes were cast for Carrollton Council, the response from the Board of Elections was, "we don't know."
The FPS was told to "count up the amount of votes cast for write-in candidates to find out how many votes were cast." The votes cast for Andrew Gonda, Frank Leghart, Scott Velain and John Yeager total 501. Since each voter had the option of casting up to four write-in votes, it was obvious not a great number of ballots had to be counted. They also had to view only 45 write-in ballots cast for the East Central Ohio Educational Service Center.
The next question posed by the FPS concerned the time it took to count the absentee ballots.
"All absentee ballots were cast on paper this year," Carter said. "In some past elections we used an electronic voting machine in the office, but this year, we didn't get all the machines tested prior to the beginning of absentee voting, so we were not permitted to use any machines."
Reece said that meant scanning each of the absentee ballots along with the paper ballots cast at the poles. "Since the ballots were two pages each, in essence we had to scan each ballot twice," he said.
The board used two scanners to do the ballots. The results from the scanning go onto a card and are uploaded into the GEMS systems. Prior to the introduction of electronic voting machines, all ballots were scanned manually.
FPS readers were alerted to a situation at a Lake Mohawk precinct where the voting machines were not working early in the morning and the supply of paper ballots was extinguished.
Elections staff responded to the inquiry by saying the printers did not work on all the machines. They said the problem was corrected, but did not know at what time. They said they were also not aware of a problem with a Union Twp. voting machine that would not allow a voter to cast a vote for the second school board candidate of his choice.
The FPS then asked about an unusually large amount of votes received by village council candidate Luke Grimes in the absentee count. Grimes received 373 votes in the results of the electronic voting machine count for the 26 precincts. That number jumped to 856 when the certified results were released. After checking the list, Vernier told the FPS, "that is a typo." Two more typos were identified and corrected in the results presented to the FPS late Friday morning.
The FPS asked for the vote count from each of the 26 precincts prior to the election. Officials assured the FPS they would have "results (the winners) before they went home Wednesday morning," but said the precinct-by-precinct count might not be available until later Wednesday.
When the Board of Elections staff was asked for the precinct count Thursday, the answer was, "you can't have that until the official canvass." The official canvas is scheduled Nov. 17 at 9 a.m.
The FPS staff surveyed the Board of Elections in adjacent counties to get a feel for how many precincts were counted in those counties and what time the results were certified. Here are what was found:
Columbiana County- 103 precincts were counted and the results certified at 11 p.m. The voting machines in Columbiana County count the write-in ballots.
Harrison County - 16 precincts were counted and results certified at 10:45 p.m.
Stark County - 364 precincts counted and the results completed by 1 a.m.
Tuscarawas County - 81 precincts counted and the results completed by 10 p.m.
Carter said all votes will be counted a second time during the official canvass. The 101 provisional votes cast on Election Day will also be checked for validity and added to the count if they are determined to be valid. |
