Minor voting machine malfunction to be double-checked by Floyd County administrative recount for Rockford precinct

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A special Floyd County Board of Supervisors meeting has been called for this morning (Friday) to clear up an issue that occurred during the party primary election Tuesday in the county.

County Auditor Gloria Carr explained that the optical ballot scanner at the Rockford Precinct in the Rockford Community Center wasn’t working properly when the election began Tuesday morning.

“At the onset of opening the polls at this site, the OVO ballot scanner was not accepting voter’s ballots,” Carr said in a letter to the Board of Supervisors. “Precinct election officials (PEOs) properly directed voters to use the emergency slot on the ballot box to insert ballots and called the auditor’s office for assistance with the malfunction of the equipment.

“In short order, the equipment issue was resolved and all subsequent ballots inserted in the OVO ballot scanner by voters were accepted,” Carr said.

That evening, when the polls had closed, a Republican precinct election official and a Democratic precinct election official removed the ballots that had been placed in the emergency compartment and ran them through the scanner, Carr said. All those ballots scanned correctly except for one, which was rejected on several attempts, but could not be determined why.

“I advised the PEOs to ‘close’ the election per equipment instructions and hand count the one remaining ballot, with the combined totals to be submitted for their precinct election results,” Carr said.

The county auditor, whose position includes being the county commissioner of elections, said the records show that 85 people at that polling site had signed the “declaration of eligibility” form that voters sign before they are given a ballot.

“A total of 85 voted ballots were accounted for, 84 inserted in the OVO ballot scanner and one hand-counted,” Carr said.

She said she contacted the Iowa Secretary of State Office regarding the incident and was advised to do an administrative recount for the Rockford polling site.

An administrative recount has to be called for by the Board of Supervisors, so the item on the special meeting agenda for 8:30 a.m. Friday is review and/or action on a resolution calling for the administrative recount for the Rockford precinct.

Carr said in her letter to the supervisors that no other polling places reported equipment malfunctions during the Tuesday election.

After every election held in the state, the Secretary of State office randomly selects at least one precinct per county to do a hand count of the ballots to compare them to the results reported by the voting equipment and see if any instances of errors can be spotted.

This election the Floyd County precinct selected for the sample hand count was the Rock Grove Precinct that was voted at Nora Springs City Hall.

Carr said she was “happy to report” that the hand count of the ballots at that precinct resulted in “100% accuracy comparing equipment tabulation to hand counted results.”