The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Can’t be too careful, right?
Lake County Elections Board conducting ‘thorough’ testing ahead of March primary
Iowa Democratic Party officials said a coding issue with a new app caused delays in the counting and reporting of caucus results.
“As part of our investigation, we determined with certainty that the underlying data collected via the app was sound,” Iowa Democratic Party chairman Troy Price said in a statement according to
NBC News. “While the app was recording data accurately, it was reporting out only partial data. We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed.”
Last year, the Lake County Elections Board dealt with an election night issue of its own, but officials are confident ahead of the March 17 primary.
When the results of the threeperson Willoughby Hills District 2 City Council race were initially posted online on election night Nov. 5, the elections board erroneously reported that Peter Pike had received the most votes. The correct unofficial final count came over shortly after that showing
Tanya Taylor Draper winning the council seat. Pike finished third.
The error came from the vendor — ES&S, LLC — that provides the vote reporting software, board officials said. The issue was not with the voting machines or vote tabulation equipment. Officials cited a layout error in the vote totals report as the cause of an initial report being incorrect.
An Ohio Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson said the office looked into the issue and confirmed the elections board corrected the issue appropriately.
Ahead of the March primary, Lake County Elections Board Deputy Director Jan Clair said they’ve done “probably the most thorough” testing of the equipment since she’s been with the elections board.
Voting machine technician Robin Tagliamonte has overseen the equipment for the past 15 years. He said they’ve put some new procedures in place. There are two forms of voting: paper and electronic and “because of that we go to a little extra effort to make sure all of the paper ballots are exactly identical to the electronic ballots,” he said.
Tagliamonte said it’s something they’ve always done, but they’re doing more extensive test voting this time around.
“I think on the (voting machines) we’ve put 17,000 test votes on them, and by the end of it we’re probably going to have 100,000 test votes to ensure that everything’s working correctly,” he said.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Feb. 4 posted a video to Twitter explaining differences between how the Iowa caucuses and Ohio’s primaries are run.
“I think the first thing to mention is in Ohio primaries are run by elections professionals, bi-partisan teams at all 88 county board of elections,” LaRose said in a video posted Feb. 4 on Twitter. “Not by a group of volunteers from either party.”
LaRose added the way Ohio does it’s reporting, they would “never rely on something like a smart phone app.”
“We have dedicated lines to each county board of elections,” he said. “They report to us using those on a periodic basis throughout the evening. We check that against the paper record that exists.”
The app used in Iowa was built by a Washington, D.C.-based company called Shadow, Inc. Records show that the Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow a little more than $63,000 over two payments in November and December, according to the Wall Street Journal. Shadow bills itself as a company that builds “affordable and easy-to-use tools” for progressives, according to its website.