After a long wait for ballots to arrive at the East Lansing city clerk’s office, votes finally started to be tabulated at around 10:45 p.m. Tuesday night.
“We had a little bit of trouble getting the ballots tabulated, but once they arrived, the votes were counted pretty quick,” said Barb McCaffrey, an election official.
But even at 12:15 a.m. on Wednesday, Precincts 2, 11 and 13 had yet to deliver their ballots to be counted.
City Clerk Nicole Evans said the reason for many of the delays was defective equipment at polling stations.
“We’ve been having issues with the numbers of ballots not balancing,” Evans said. “The tabulator, which counts the ballots, kept getting jammed.”
According to Evans, the faulty tabulator was located at The Peoples Church, 200 W. Grand River Ave., Precinct 2’s polling location.
In addition to faulty equipment, long lines and a record turnout also contributed to delays.
“I told voters to go at 7 a.m. when the polls opened because that would not be a peak hour,” Evans said. “But it turned out that everyone went at 7 a.m., so it turned out to be a peak hour after all.”
Final numbers haven’t been reported, but turnout among students is almost certainly a new record for MSU and East Lansing, said Evans. She said 1,000 more absentee ballots were requested than in 2004, totaling about 3,600. About 95 percent of those absentee ballots were returned. At least 50 percent of residents voted within their registered precinct.
Once ballots were received by the city clerk’s office, there were still hiccups, however. The one machine at the clerk’s office that reads the results was not functioning properly, Evans said.
“There’s a cartridge that you put into the machine and it reads the results,” she said. “But it’s an older machine — and we only have one — it took some time to reboot a few times but once it got going, we had no more problems.”
Despite some difficulties, ballot receiving officer Patti Oates-Ulrich said she was forewarned of a late night.
“I was planning on being here until at least midnight,” she said. “But the later it gets, the more mistakes we make, so we need to finish up soon.”
But even though it may still be a late night for volunteers at the city clerk’s office, Evans said many of the problems that have occurred were expected.
“A lot of people have done a great job getting people through the polls and getting them through. I’m very pleased with how things have gone,” she said.
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