Count Delayed

Equipment Breakdown Hinders Final Tally

— Benton County election officials were uncertain Wednesday afternoon when they would have a final vote count from Tuesday’s general election.

The county’s three machines used for tabulating paper ballots all malfunctioned Tuesday night and remained out of service through the day Wednesday. Kim Dennison, election coordinator, said a service technician was en route to Bentonville from Kansas and would arrive late Wednesday afternoon.

At A Glance

Record Vote

Benton County election officials say they expect a record turnout once all of the votes are counted in Tuesday’s election. With electronic voting results and some absentee votes tabulated, the county had recorded 73,581 ballots cast in the 2012 general election. Benton County had 113,361 registered voters for the 2012 election. In 2008, there were 76,539 total ballots cast by the county’s 103,663 registered voters.

Source: Staff Report

The machines were tested and working before the election. One problem had been detected and repaired by Election Systems & Software before the election, she said, but a different problem came up Tuesday night, Dennison said.

“All three broke down; they just started throwing code, giving us a ‘sensor error,’” Dennison said.

Dennison said the machines broke down before the county could run absentee ballots through them. With the number of paper ballots remaining to be counted, she said, it could be Friday or later before the tally is completed if the machines aren’t repaired.

John Brown Jr., Election Commission chairman, said if the machines are repaired, the ballots will be processed immediately. Dennison said the count will be completed as quickly as possible, but several thousand paper ballots printed on Election Day will have to be counted by hand since the county was unable to obtain ballot stock that fits the machines.

The county ordered extra ballots after a combination of pre-election miscalculations and election day errors depleted the supply of paper ballots by midmorning at some precincts, Dennison said.

Some poll workers gave voters the option of moving out of the voting queue and using paper ballots, bypassing the electronic voting machines, Dennison said.

Benton County has designated the electronic voting machines as the primary voting method for the county. State law requires the county to have paper ballots on hand for provisional voting but only up to a number equal to 10 percent of the registered voters in a precinct, Dennison said. Poll workers were instructed to give voters the option of using paper ballot or electronic voting once they reached the front of the queue but not to use paper ballots to try and reduce the length of the line.

“That should not have been the process,” Dennison said.

Dennison said the staff and commission calculated the number of preprinted paper ballots based on recent elections and printed 11,000 ballots. She said use of paper ballots had been declining. In the 2012 primary election, for example, Dennison said the county printed 15,500.

“I probably threw out 10,000 of those,” she said. “It’s been like that for every election since I’ve been here.”

Dennison did say she hadn’t seen the figures for paper ballot use in the 2008 election. According to county records, there were 76,539 total ballots cast in 2008, and there were 28,966 paper ballots counted on election day.

Dennison said long lines and no paper ballots were the most common complaints she received. There was a problem in at least one polling place where poll workers were giving voters the wrong ballot for a time Tuesday. She estimated as many as 400 voters could have been given the wrong ballot before the error was discovered.

“(Tuesday) would have been smooth had we had more paper ballots,” Dennison said.

Once the preprinted ballots were used, she said, the county printed another 1,000 ballots on ballot stock held in reserve. When it became evident that was inadequate, Dennison said, a vendor was found and Brown drove to Fort Smith to buy more stock. The additional ballot stock didn’t match the paper the county used for the other paper ballots, and so those 3,000 to 4,000 additional ballots will be counted by hand even after the ballot-counting machines are repaired.

Brown said paper ballots were only one factor contributing to the long lines.

“Due to the changes in 2010 Census, we had to redistrict so almost none of the precincts have the same population as they did in 2008,” Brown said. “Then in addition to the presidential race, we have a number of ballot issues — the wet-dry issue, medical marijuana and the (highway) sales tax — that brought out a lot of people. Consequently, our figures were off.”

Tiffany Underwood with the Benton County Clerk’s Office said there were many ballots where voters marked just the presidential election or one or two of the ballot issues. That could contribute to the unusually large number of undervotes tallied, she said.

“When we were counting the paper ballots, there were a lot of them where they voted for president or on the liquor sales or marijuana issue and that was it,” Underwood said.

Mike Sevak, chairman of the county’s Republican Party, said he was pleased with the overall conduct of the election, saying he thought the Election Commission and election staff did a good job. He said the presidential election and the number of ballot issues drove a record voter turnout.

“We had 40,000 people vote early,” Sevak said. “That’s a record. I don’t think anybody anticipated the turnout we had on Tuesday.”

Sevak, a former election commissioner himself, said the problems with paper ballots presents the county with a difficult choice.

“These Ivotronic machines are like computers, and a lot of people aren’t going to want to use them,” he said. “On the other hand, the ballot was 19 inches long, and with all the different districts, we had 149 different ballot styles in Benton County. There are some people who, when they go to vote, are going to stop and read the whole thing. I think that was part of the problem. The ballot is so long, and people weren’t familiar with the things on it.”

County Clerk Tena O’Brien said the county also needs to look at the locations it uses for polling places. She said many are too small for the number of voters. O’Brien said she went to one location in Rogers and had to reconfigure the lines because people could have gone to the voting machines without going through the proper check-in process.

County Judge Bob Clinard said the combination of factors created “a perfect storm” on Election Day, but he’s not sure what the solution will be.

“Hindsight is 20-20, and maybe they should have looked ahead and printed more paper ballots,” Clinard said. “It’s a fluid situation. The thing that surprises me the most is the number of people that have a distrust in the electronic voting. There are people who believe there’s a conspiracy, that electronic ballots can be rigged by someone somewhere to come up with a different outcome than the paper ballots. There’s a lot of people that just will not use the electronic ballot. That’s OK, I guess, but we’re going to have to decide how many paper ballots we’re going to need.”

Brown said he will meet with the other commissioners and the election staff to consider the county’s future practices. He said Election Systems & Software is no longer making the voting machines the county uses, but some used machines can be found. Whether Benton County should buy more voting machines or increase the number of paper ballots — knowing that many could go unused — will be discussed.

“I don’t think there is an easy solution,” Brown said.

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