3 known Ne problems

[Omaha Steve]

The most heavily Democratic area in the state (Florence) started getting phone calls the night before the election telling them that their polling place had been changed. Then the election office was locked down for 10 minutes that night. Add in the Sarpy county BIG over vote. Any other known troubles for Ne?

[LiberalAndProud]

1. Any recounts have to be done on the same machines that

counted the votes originally. I would really like to get an initiative on the ballot that allows for a hand recount.

Was Sarpy County ready to go blue? There were long lines there during the day (dismal per-hour voting rate). What is going on there?

[LiberalAndProud]

2. Sarpy County Election Summary for 2004 shows

80 of 80 precincts reported (100%)
http://www.sarpy.com/election/results/2004General.htm

In the Primary 2004 and General Election 2002, 81 of 81 (100%) precincts were tabulated. Are we still counting a precinct? or did one entire princinct get thrown out?

57,777 ballots cast from 82,607 registered voters in 2004 (69.94%)
29,076 ballots cast from 73,200 registered voters in 2002 (39.72%)

Did we lose a precinct? What's going on there, anybody know?

[Omaha Steve]

3. The links

Florence-Area Voters Get Bogus Calls

POSTED: 10:38 pm CST November 2, 2004
OMAHA, Neb. -- Someone called a number of north Omaha voters Tuesday and gave them misinformation about Election Day polling places.

Castillo said someone identifying themselves as a member of his office called a number of voters in the Florence neighborhood. The callers hit Ward 1 precincts 2 and 4 with the bogus calls.

Castillo said the calls created some problems at polling places in Florence, but those have been resolved and inspectors are investigating the calls and monitoring the polling places.

As many as 2,100 voters are registered in the affected districts, but it isn't clear how many calls were made.

http://www.theomahachannel.com/politics/3885584/detail.html

Gas smell evacuates election workers

BY JOSEPH MORTON


WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Workers at the Douglas County Election Commissioner's Office were struggling to cope with a huge tide of ballots Tuesday night when they were interrupted by the smell of gas.

Douglas County sheriff's deputies told everyone to evacuate the building at 115th and Davenport Streets shortly after 10 p.m.

Ballot counters stood in the parking lot, shivering, while maintenance staff checked out the office's gas-powered generator.

Some took advantage of the break to grab a smoke.

Workers were allowed back inside to resume counting after about 10 minutes because maintenance workers could not find a leak.

Said elections manager Mike Scarpello: "When it rains, it pours."

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=1673&u_sid=1248277


Countinghouse Blues
Too many votes

Sarpy County election officials are trying to figure out how they ended up with more votes than voters in the general election. As many as 10,000 extra votes have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals.

Johnny Boykin lost his bid to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat in the race was 127 votes.

Boykin says, "When I went in to work the next day and saw that 3,342 people had shown up to vote in our war, I thought something's not right."

He's right. There are not even 3,000 people registered to vote in his ward.

For some reason, some votes were counted twice.

Deputy Sarpy County Election Commissioner Ed Gilbert says, "It affected 32 of the 80 precincts. And I suppose as many as 10,000 votes."

Sarpy County borrowed the election equipment from Omaha-based Election Systems & Software. Its employees operated the machines that are now double-checking the ballots.

No one is sure exactly what went wrong.

Gilbert says, "The only thing we know is that if you load the disc out there, it reads fine. They didn't read fine on this computer."

Election officials say they don't believe the glitch will impact who won and who lost any of the races. They figure that when votes were doubled in a particular race, the totals were doubled for both candidates. Vote totals would be skewed but percentages would not change.

In spite of that, the candidates want to know the real numbers.

Boykin says, "I think we owe it to those folks to make sure all the votes got counted, correctly."

As of Thursday night, the problem still had not been pinpointed. The Sarpy County Election office had hoped to post the updated results on its Web site but, at last check, we got the following message: "Updated unofficial results for the 2004 General Election are pending. Please check back later."

http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1161971.html



Sarpy County Recount
3,000 phantom votes detected

The recount is over in Sarpy County and 3,000 phantom votes were apparently in the mix on Election Day.

We reported earlier about a computer problem that doubled votes in half the county's precincts. That miscue accounted for 3,000 make-believe votes.

According to election officials, it did not make a difference as to who won and lost.

But in one Papillion City Council race, the difference between winning and losing went from 127 votes to 41.

http://www.wowt.com/home/headlines/1164496.html