SUNBURY — Representatives of both major political parties held election results in Northumberland County in limbo for more than an hour Tuesday night after a computer glitch caused problems at the polls.
Early Tuesday, at about 7:30 a.m., poll workers discovered that voters who cast a straight-party ticket could not see a summary of the candidates they voted for.
Mike Anderson, deputy director of elections, said many of the county’s 94 precincts were notified immediately and told to inform voters not to cast straight-party tickets.
However, election workers were notified shortly before the polls closed at 8 p.m. that representatives from the Republican and Democratic state committees — along with the Department of State — had expressed concern over the integrity of the votes and they could not be counted.
Director of elections Mary Thew said she was told not to take the memory cards — which contain a record of votes cast — out of the voting machines until told otherwise.
At about 9 p.m., county commissioners Vinny Clausi and Kurt Masser said the county had agreed to count the votes by hand, using printouts from the machines, and store the machines in a secure area.
“We want to do anything we can to protect the integrity of the machines,” Masser said.
Several minutes later, however, an order from Northumberland County Judge Charles Saylor was issued, directing the county to tally votes using the memory cards and lock the machines up until given further notice.
“The overall concern of the state Republican Party was that when (voters) went in to utilize the machines and they cast a straight-party ballot, their votes weren’t appearing,” said Matthew Zeigler, an attorney for Republican Chris Hackett’s campaign for the 10th Congressional District. “We were concerned that people’s votes weren’t counted. The overall goal of us being here is to make sure that anything that documented what the votes were is preserved.”
The county had all the numbers, which are still unofficial at this point, tallied by 10:30 p.m.
Clausi said later this week, the county will find out from Saylor how to proceed with an official vote count. The county must release an official count by Friday.
Jones said the problems encountered Tuesday and the impounding of the voting machines should not delay the release of the official results Friday.
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