Ballot Not the Problem with Late Vote Count Tuesday Night, Says County Registrar

The votes are in for the local, State and federal races in the 2018 Georgia General Primary Election, but in Stephens County the process to get that final, unofficial vote count hit some major speed bumps Tuesday night.

Polls closed at 7p and the first results came in for the absentee paper ballots soon after.

After that, it was almost three hours before the rest of votes were counted and released to the public and the State.

County Registrar Bill Cochran explained to WNEG News on Wednesday, the delay in issuing the election results had to do with four voting machine cards.

“During the processing of the DRE (Direct Recording Election) cards, we did get an error that was caused by an improper close of the machine,” Cochran said. “But with the aid of the Secretary of State’s office that error was clarified and we took care of it. The four cards that were affected were taken care of and we counted the votes. They were uploaded. And they were part of the total (number of votes) that was provided.”

Cochran caught the problem early on and explained how he was able to identify the four voting machines that had problems.

“Each card that is inserted into the DRE’s, the voting machines, are individually programmed with identifiers for that specific card. So, there are no cards that are identical so that you can track everything that is done in the election as you go. That’s how we identified the four out of the 24 (voting machines). That’s how we identified the problem and we rectified the problem with the State.”

Cochran said the cards stay in the voting machines during the entire election process.

Cochran tells WNEG News he had never encountered an issue with the voting machine cards in past elections so he had to call the Secretary of State’s office in Atlanta for help, which took a couple of hours.

Tuesday night, Cochran initially said that he had run into an issue with a “card,” but that later became four cards with errors.

To add to the confusion, that prompted rumors that it was an issue with a ballot and questions arose as to why the vote count was stalled due to one provisional ballot.

Cochran emphasized Wednesday the issue he encountered Tuesday evening had nothing to do with any problem ballots.

“A card is a memory card that comes out of the voting machine and that records all of the data that is input by the voters. There was no problem with the data, it was just opening the cards that we received an ‘error’ on,” Cochran explained. “And we addressed that with the Secretary of State’s office. We were able to upload all of the results. And we verified that all of the results were correct based on the paper trail we kept throughout the election. There was no problem with any ballot.”

Another question that arose was why it took the poll workers three hours to deliver the voting cards to the Registrar’s office.

According to Cochran, there is a procedure that must be followed once the polls close before poll workers can deliver the cards to the Registrar’s office, and that, as he explained can take some time to complete.

“Their responsibility is to shut down the precinct and that includes shutting down all the equipment, which was 25 voting machines and eight express polls which is how we check in all our voters,” he explained. “And all of that has to be documented as it’s closed and then sealed for storage and transportation. And then the precinct itself has to be taken down so we can go and pick up everything the next day. And in that process it just takes a little while.”

Finally, questions arose as to the actual number of early voters. On Tuesday, WNEG News erroneously reported over 4,000 voters had cast early ballots.

Cochran said Wednesday the actual number was 1,639 advance voters.

That number, combined with 153 absentee paper ballots, and 1,388 ballots cast at the precinct on Tuesday brings the total number of actual votes cast in Stephens County for the Georgia General Primary to 3,180.

Cochran said that means only 21.16% of the County’s 15,030 registered voters cast ballots this election; a lower voter turnout than he expected.