Onondaga County elections officials will be performing a rescan of all 9,700 early voting ballots after about 800 votes were not reported in election night results. Commissioner Dustin Czarny says a routine ballot reconciliation turned up the discrepancy.
"It's frustrating, but it is also how the system is designed to work."
Czarny says human error and missteps by poll workers at the DeWitt and Armond Magnarelli Center early voting sites were the cause of the inaccurate results. He emphasizes that no ballots were lost. Czarny adds that the ballot counting machines worked fine, and that computer glitches are not the cause of the unreported votes. After consulting with the state board of elections, the commissioners decided the best and most accurate course of action is to rescan all early voting ballots.
"That is why the election night results are always called unofficial until we can do these double checks. Sometimes, it's a couple of ballots here or there. But this time, it's a little bit more, and that's why we're being transparent and open about what's happening."
The errors occurred October 25th and 30th in Dewitt and October 28th at the Magnarelli Center. Czarny says some results could be affected.
"The races out in Manlius are probably the most likely affected because there were two days in DeWitt, and that's where a lot of the Manlius residents vote, and a lot of city residents. But none of the races in the city are close, whereas the races in Manlius are."
The process will begin Friday at 9 and continue until 4 pm, or into the weekend if needed. But even then, the results still won’t be complete; elections officials will begin opening about 6,000 absentee and affidavit ballots starting Tuesday.
