Primary election finalized

By Scott Nicholson

nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

A hand-and-eye count Monday verified the accuracy of the county’s new voting machines, and Tuesday’s canvass caused little change in the unofficial election returns reported last week.

Monday’s count, mandated by the state as a test of new machines in each county, was conducted at the Board of Elections office in Boone.  Two members of each party, supervised by elections officials, hand counted ballots in a statewide primary race for the North Carolina Supreme Court seat.

The Bald Mountain and New River 3 precincts were chosen for the count, and the hand counts perfectly matched those recorded by the digital scanners that read paper ballots at the polls.

There were 63 votes cast in Bald Mountain and 334 cast in New River 3. The votes were hand counted twice to ensure accuracy.

There were 53 provisional votes cast Monday, and the elections board approved 42 of them and added them to the final tallies, which led to no change in candidate outcomes.

Provisionals are ballots cast by someone who has moved within the county but hasn’t changed their registration yet, so their names don’t appear on the precinct list. They are allowed to vote but their status is reviewed before the vote counts. Convicted felons and those who didn’t register before the required deadline are ineligible if they cast provisionals and their votes are tossed out.

The elections board reported two problems with the new machines. In Blowing Rock, the scanning machine didn’t work at all, but a replacement unit was put in operation before the polls opened. In another precinct, a power unit failed but was quickly replaced, according to elections director Jane Hodges. The Shawneehaw precinct had a mild glitch after polls closed because of telephone line repairs, so the ballots were driven to the elections office for counting instead of being reported over the phone.

Hodges said voter turnout was about 17 percent among active voters. It was about 13.5 percent among all voters, including those designated “inactive” who are still on the rolls but haven’t voted in the last two presidential elections.

The county is using Election Systems & Software machines, approved because they provide a paper ballot as well as a digital record of each vote. The county spent about $300,000 on the machines, though state and federal grants ended up covering the cost, allowing the county to maintain its capital reserve amount for expected future upgrades.

The only other glitch caused by the machines were in a few absentee ballots that had been mailed in. Some were folded or had ragged edges that made them difficult to feed into the scanner. In those cases, the board of elections “spoiled” the damaged ballot and made corresponding marks on a new ballot, then fed it into the machine.

Results of the statewide accuracy test weren’t available by press time, but shortly after the primary state elections director Gary Bartlett gave the machines a vote of confidence. Only 13 memory cards failed, though up to 150 were expected to fail, since the equipment had been in place only two months for testing. Seven machines had faulty sensors that required the ballot to be fed into the scanner in a certain direction. Bartlett said all votes ended up being counted accurately.

The new machines were mandated due to changes in state and federal election laws, mostly stemming from the “hanging chad” controversy in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, with voter intent difficult to determine on paper punch ballots.

New machines didn’t necessarily inspire the public to participate, though. Voter turnout statewide was under 10 percent, an all-time low.