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Highlands Today

Technology Glitches Delay Vote Count

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By GARY PINNELL

Highlands Today

Published: August 28, 2008

SEBRING - Almost as soon as the polls closed, the phone started ringing inside the counting room at the Highlands County Election Office.

"We thought, boy, this is going to work great," said Norma Stokes, assistant supervisor of elections.

The optical scanners on which voters cast their ballots in the 25 precincts across Highlands County have a new feature: at 7 p.m., just plug them into a phone line, and bingo, they call in their results to the headquarters' computer.

Before the election started, Stokes thought her office might have final results as soon as 7:30 p.m.

But by 7:30, problems started. Four machines couldn't make the telephone call with their built-in modems.

In addition, said Deputy Supervisor Karen Kensinger, one machine modemed its results twice. She got on the phone with Elections Systems & Software, headquartered in Omaha.

As she finally learned hours later, she should have deleted that extra file. But she didn't know, and the ESS technology didn't volunteer the information.

Finally, they went back to Plan A, Kensinger said. They brought all 25 ballot boxes back to Sebring, and got the results the old-fashioned way. Sebring Lakes, Precinct 16, was the last to report, and the election results were finally released before 10 p.m.

Elections Supervisor Joe Campbell tested all the modems and all the machines before Tropical Storm Fay, Stokes said.

"I don't know if the storm had anything to do with it, but we knew that two of the phone lines didn't work on Tuesday morning," she said. Embarq was called, and the lines were repaired. Those two weren't the precincts which had trouble later, she said.

Are the results accurate?

Kensinger and Stokes have absolute confidence the machines kept the right totals. And they'll find out soon when they recount the Democratic votes for the Jeri Canale-Bruce Borkosky race for District 3 County Commission.

Two provisional ballots still hadn't been counted as of Wednesday morning, Kensinger said. One was a non-partisan, the other a Republican.

"But they both thought they were Democrats," Kensinger said. They'll have to come to the office and prove they changed their registration for their votes to count in the Democratic primary, Stokes said.

Even so, their votes likely won't change Canale's eight-vote win over Borkosky, but it's possible the recount could, she said.

Gary Pinnell can be reached at gpinnell@highlandstoday.com or 863 386-5828

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