Washington County reports election night miscounts

WASHINGTON — County officials say unofficial results reported on election night failed to include absentee ballots. The issue was corrected before results were finalized by the county supervisors Tuesday morning, and did not change the outcome of any races.

“While all absentee ballots were counted and tabulated by the Absentee Board on Election Day, information from the flash drive used to count the absentee ballots was not included in the results that were downloaded and forwarded to the Office of the Secretary of State,” the county auditor’s office said in a statement. “This resulted in absentee ballot results not being included in the unofficial Election Summary Results provided to the public.”

Rather than reversing or narrowing any race outcomes, the newly counted absentee ballots marginally increased the winner’s margins across the board, according to the now-official election results, which do include absentee votes.

Republican candidate for District 92 State Representative Heather Hora saw her lead increase by 14. Supervisor District 3 Incumbent Marcus Fedler upped his margin of victory from a razor-thin five votes to a slightly more comfortable 20. The county recorder result in favor of Teresa Mangold went from a 703-point gap to 868. Similar trends were clear in every contested federal and state primary race.

Widmer said he was glad the error was caught in time, before results were finalized Tuesday morning.

“We regret that this happened but we learned a valuable lesson, and it’s nice to know that the checks and balances did indeed work,” he said at a meeting before results were approved by county supervisors. “What you will be canvassing here this morning will be what we consider to be the actual results, and it includes absentee ballots that were cast.”

The county has not yet declared a cause for the mistake, but the statement said staff were looking into it.

“We have proactively begun a review of what took place so that steps may be taken to prevent a similar occurrence in the future,” the statement read. “My office serves to conduct elections that are fair, legal, and impartial and we will continue to do so in the future.”

Board of Supervisors Chair Richard Young said the issue was unrelated to paper-jam issues that several other counties experienced using the same in-person voting equipment as Washington County on Election Day.

“Some counties had jamming issues, we did not have that issue here in Washington County,” he said. “I just want to have it on the record that we did not have an issue with machines jamming.”

With absentee ballots added to the tally, Washington County’s turnout numbers improved slightly. Out of 15,464 registered voters, the number of ballots cast rose to 3,257 according to Washington County Deputy Elections Administrator Sue Meeks. The number brings participation from 16.49% to 21.06%.

The newly added 1,007 ballots did not drastically alter the political party divide from unofficial results for the historically conservative county. Republicans saw their share of votes drop by just over a percentage point, resting at 75.59% in the final result.

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com