Billings Montana ELection official make mistake, restarts count.

I saw this on Nightline to-night. This guy screwed up, said he made a mistake, and election workers had to restart the vote counting, working nearly to dawn. ANd Duane seems to be getting a lot of respect for the way he handled it.







By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff

Yellowstone County elections workers were expecting to work until 5 or 6 this morning after deciding after midnight Wednesday to recount every ballot cast in the county Tuesday.

County Election Administrator Duane Winslow said the fault was his. The county was using a new software program for its three electronic vote-counting machines this year, he said, and he neglected an important function in tabulating the absentee ballots.

Absentee ballots - and there were nearly 20,000 in Yellowstone County this year - are normally counted first, after which the regular ballots from the precincts are counted.

After the absentee ballots were counted, Winslow said, he was supposed to hit a "zero out" button on the voting machines, which basically cleans the slate before the regular ballots are counted. That was the step Winslow neglected to take on two of the machines. He said he thinks he hit the button on one of the machines.

More:

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/11/08/news/local/22-flub.txt

I watched it happen last night from my computer. He made an honest mistake on new equipment. I think they discovered it because the totals went heavily Democratic in a republican stronghold. Had they heavily favored Repubs, I believe they would have missed the error and noone would have known.

The guy may be a little dim, but the process is screwed up. Every action people take should be witnessed and recorded to ensure accuracy. Equipment should be monitored 24/7 and not just to make sure there's no hanky-panky, but also to make sure the machine is USED CORRECTLY.

Anyway, I thought they did pretty well for a Repub state. The Scty of State said he would announce results in 30 minutes (based in part on the high numbers in Yellowstone). The mistake was caught just in time.

I don't mind mistakes as long as they are honest, discovered and corrected.