County Election Board says key result report should be ready Monday
UPDATE 9 p.m.: Because of some tabulation issues, County GOP elections director Joe Goeke said the report will not be available until Monday.
UPDATE: About 7 p.m. Friday, the St. Louis County Election Board said the township report is ready.
Earlier post:
If you want to know how St. Louis County voters divided last Tuesday in the presidential race or where Metro had support for a failed half-cent transit sales tax increase, you are going to have to wait until at least Monday – six days after the election.
A report of votes by each of the county’s 28 townships will show Tuesday’s voting patterns. The St. Louis County Election Board will produce this document on Monday at the earliest, long after the election became yesterday’s news for most of the public.
This reporter has covered election results for 35 years and has seen the county election board’s ability to produce the township report go downhill, particularly since the board ceased using punch cards two years ago.
At its best, the board provided the report immediately after its staff completed the unofficial count on election night. In the last years of punch cards, the township report generally became available before noon Wednesday, the day after the election.
The St. Louis Election Board had its equivalent report from Tuesday’s vote – on the city’s 28 wards — available Thursday. See it in Political Fix.
Richard Bauer, a spokesman for the county board, said the delay is a result of the staff wanting to make sure the unofficial result includes information from each of the board’s 1,750 touchscreen machines.
“We want to make sure we report every vote,” he said.
Joseph Goeke, the Republican director of elections, has ordered the staff to compare flash memory cards from each of the machines with other electronic devises which collected results from touchscreens to make sure the board didn’t miss votes in the unofficial results, Bauer said.
Under the punch-card system, concerns about missing votes was not an issue because the staff on election night brought all the cards to board headquarters for counting, Bauer said.
This is absolutely ridiculous. This is simple technology. In the private sector, cell phone companies track minutes used, banks process debits and credits from their ATM machines, and it all seems to work. Meanwhile, we spend who knows how many millions of dollars on new voting machines for this? Results should have been available within 1/2 hour after the polls closed on Tuesday.
ATM’s, etc are hooked up through networks and phone lines. They are hackable, as has been demonstrated on a near daily basis in the news (identity theft alerts).
Thus, this 1/2 hour for results is possible. But, then so would hacking. I’d rather wait and know our votes are safe.
I’ll defend election board on that one.
What I can’t understand—if these machines are all so important why are some still in the polling places. I had a meeting at a place on Thursday night that served as a polling place. The equipment was still there (and could have easily walked out the door).
I would like to see a priority in picking up these expensive pieces of equipment, along with audits of the paper trails they provide versus the machine counts on a select percentage of machines.
One more thought on this…
If you were to network these machines, how much more of an additional cost would it be to ensure there is proper phone/network lines at just under 500 polling places?
They are lucky to have enough electrical outlets, let alone network jacks.
suzyjax - When I said 1/2 hour, I was thinking of the current system, not networking. In reality, there are a few polling places that are more than 1/2 hour from the election board office - Wildwood comes to mind - so I’ve exaggerated a little bit. Perhaps an hour would be more realistic.
But when you mention networking them - what a great idea. The model for that would not be ATM machines, because the cost of obtaining phone lines would be prohibitive. But there’s another option, which is currently used by Ameren to read your electric meter: the cellular network. With proper security, hacking isn’t an issue. You could still have the memory cartridges, so that the network results could be confirmed by reading the memory card, providing an additional backup method. And you could still have the paper trail as a fail-safe. If we had a networked system, they could provide results at 7:01.
Having trouble trying to cover up all that republican voter fraud in St Charles county buds? They had the highest level of fraud there in the entire state while cons spoke about squirrel food in an attenpt to cover up their own corruption. Cheated and you still lost. Got to feel good about that, right? LMAOROTF
Now the pitiful hooders have gun sales soring when they can’t even keep the weapons they have now safe. You need to be very careful about how you proceed from here. It could all blow up in your hooded little hateful faces.
David,
Your post is all over the place. Please provide us with something, anything to support all of your claims.
What fraud?
What guns sales?
What failure to keep guns safe?
What hatred?
Nick,
You are under the assumption, too, that as the clock strikes 7 PM they can pull the memory cards and race to Maplewood.
7 PM is the last time you can get in line. There are closing procedures that take some time (maybe a 15-20 minutes). There is securing of the machines.
I mean, in your scenario the technology wouldn’t even be part of the issue. They could have run to Maplewood with the punchcards too.
Networking, whether phone line or cell technology, is not hackproof. We already have people crying about stolen elections–why add to the cacophony.
David,
The only fraud was BHO’s breaking his promise to use public financing. If you are educated, you know what I mean. He scandled $700,000,000 to promulgate a bogus message to the mis-informed young voter. Now he has to produce.
I would have been happier with the results if, in the spirit of multi-partisanship that BHO kept talking about, and in the spirit of Joe the Plumber who received the message of spreading the wealth, in all fairness, if BHO would have voluntarily looked at contributions to Mc Cain, Barr, and some of the other unheard-of heroes in the political arena, and spread some of the wealth that he got in contributions to the “poorer” candidates. I thought spreading the wealth around was his main message, and that it just wasn’t right for some people to amass wealth of $700M, while some people can only get a half mil. I think we heard - lip service.