Hanlon: Vendor’s error caused incorrect reporting of Unofficial Election Results
Monmouth County Clerk Christine Giordano Hanlon
Monmouth County Clerk Christine Giordano Hanlon said that she discovered an error in the reporting of Tuesday’s election results website at early this morning. The problem was corrected by 10:15 a.m. and the correct Unofficial Results have been uploaded to the site.
As a result of the correction, the bonding referendum in Belmar has unofficially passed by 17 votes, Red Bank Republican Council candidate Michael Whelan now leads incumbent Democrat Michael Dupont by 4 votes instead of the previously reported 31 and Republican Councilman Richard Pryor is now trailing Democrat Michael Skudera by one vote in the Neptune City Council race.
“Dominion Voting Systems, the County’s election software vendor, was on site to oversee the tally of the 2015 General Election results. Dominion appears to have deleted the Vote By Mail results from the tally at the end of the night for some unknown reason,” Hanlon said.
“We have spent several hours investigating the problem and have determined that the Dominion representative made an error in deleting the Vote By Mail numbers. We have corrected the problem and have posted the updated unofficial results to the MonmouthCountyVotes.com website.
“There are provisional ballots that still have to be reviewed by the superintendent of elections. Those ballots will not be counted until next week. As such, as in past elections, all results must be considered unofficial until after the provisional ballots are counted and the election results are certified.
“Our problems with Dominion have become chronic and will not be tolerated. We are continuing to investigate the situation and will be holding Dominion fully accountable.
“My apologies to any candidates whose results may have changed due to this error.”
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If this results stand, more lawsuits will be filed becasue the funding that the Mayor of Belmar wants to use is illegal. He can’t use Beach Authority money on things not directly connected with beach operation. There is a small office in the old pavillion that sold seasonal badges for a month or two. That is the total beach use.
-since these same machines are in use in most NJ counties, we’d better check with the others to see if it is in fact this vendor’s fault, or an internal foul- up: certainly don’t need an even more devastating outcome with the predicted heavy Presidential turnout, next year. Provisionals often break for Dems, so this still isn’t over, and I see at least 2 rough recounts coming in Red Bank and Neptune City..
I’ve lost track of how many years in a row that the County has had major screw-ups counting votes on election night.
This is very damaging … I have always encouraged people to use the opportunity to vote by mail to avoid problems getting to the polls (working late, commuter traffic jams, train delays) and losing their right to vote.
The usual complaints I get are that “my vote won’t be counted”; this “accidental” deletion of Vote By Mail tallies is rather disconcerting to me. While I don’t believe there was a deliberate effort to do this, I believe the County must restore the voters’ faith in the system by removing this vendor.
Holding the vendor “fully accountable” should mean replacing them with a vendor who can be trusted to provide a full, fair and accurate count of the peoples’ votes..
This is very concerning. Can we voters have solid trust in the system to make sure our votes are counted accurately? What does vendor error mean? what vendor? What error? Whats going to change? Whos fault? Why the mistake? Politics and politicians already have a Major trust crisis and the general public is very skeptical about these people and their potential self serving agenda. This adds to the trust factor. Not saying that anything is shady here but stating that this prompts more skepticism.
and ask if any if the other counties with the same machines experienced a similar problem, and whether, if this vendor’s fault, there is another vendor who could be hired for the service..if not, they need to figure out in IT how to fix this, before the craziness of 2016 becomes a bigger problem. Who would need lawsuits and more recounts?