County officials:uncounted votes not human error

By BRENT SHRUM Western News Editor

The failure to count 13 improperly marked ballots in the Lincoln County treasurer's race appears to have been a result of an equipment problem and not human error as originally reported, county officials said this week.

A recount last week found that the ballots had been marked in ink and were not counted by the county's tabulating machine, which didn't come as a surprise. Voters are specifically instructed to use the pencil provided with the ballot, noted county election clerk Leigh Riggleman. What wasn't expected was that some ballots that were marked in ink were not "kicked out" by the machine for review by hand on election night.

"The machine was counting correctly," Riggleman said. "The machine gave us the correct number of ballots that we did in the hand count."

Those 13 ballots had been counted by the machine as "undervotes," with no position marked by the voter. While the machine is unable to read marks made in ink, it's supposed to reject those ballots so they can be looked at by the county's resolution board, Riggleman said. That happened with some ballots that were marked in ink, but not with the 13, she said.

Conducting her own tests after the hand recount, Riggleman used a variety of pens to mark ballots and discovered that those marked with black ink were not kicked out by the machine, although they were not counted. Those marked in other colors were kicked out.

Lincoln County Clerk and Recorder Coral Cummings said she misspoke last week when she attributed the initial failure to review the 13 uncounted ballots to human error.

"I made a mistake on that," she said. "I made it sound like I was blaming my staff, and I did not mean that."

Both Cummings and Riggleman pointed out that the failure of the machine to kick out those 13 ballots was the only discrepancy found in the recount. In the initial machine count, challenger Nancy Trotter Sutton outpolled Treasurer Geri Miller 3,576 to 3,567, a difference of nine votes. In the hand recount on Nov. 20, with the 13 uncounted ballots added to the total, Sutton won by six votes, 3,581 to 3,575.

No other races were close enough that the 13 ballots at issue could have made a difference, Riggleman noted.