Columbia County Board of Elections declines commissioners’ request for ballot hand count
COLUMBIA COUNTY, Ga. (WJBF) – The Columbia County Board of Elections declined to do a ballot hand count at county commissioners’ request. They requested it after a polling problem on Tuesday during the House District 125 runoff election where Gary Richardson got 60% of the vote.
Now, commissioners want the board to reconsider its decision.
Board of Elections Director Nancy Gay said the first error message popped up on one of the runoff election poll pads on Tuesday at around 7 a.m. She said the issue was resolved within 30-45 minutes, and it didn’t affect the presidential primary election.
“They had a security setting that was preventing the voter access cards from being created,” Gay said. “So, when the voter checked in, their name was highlighted and the card appeared to be created, but when they went to the BMD, the card wouldn’t work.”
Gay said she then called the secretary of state’s office, and was told there was a security feature within the election software that didn’t recognize the runoff election.
“So they ended up instructing us to reboot the poll pad basically, and once it came back up, it worked,” she said.
Both Gay and the McDuffie County Board of Elections Director Phyllis Brooks said the issue happened at all of the precincts in their counties. About 40 emergency ballots were issued.
“I think what we need to do is just work with the state, and try to find out what happened and how to prevented in the future,” Gay said. “But at the same time, the state of Georgia has an emergency backup process in place, and it does work, and it worked yesterday.”
Commissioners said voters alerted them of the issue, which prompted them to request the hand count at around 4 p.m. Tuesday.
However, the board of elections denied that request because all of the roughly 5,800 ballots have already been accounted for, including the 40 emergency ballots.
“They don’t see a purpose in what it would serve to do a hand count,” Gay said.
Candidate Gary Richardson won the election with about 20% more votes than his opponent. He says he’s fine either way with the recount.
“If they chose to do a hand count, I surely wouldn’t be opposed to that,” Richardson said. “And if not, I’m not opposed to that or don’t have a problem with that either. Because I do want people to have full confidence in their vote.”
Gay told us this was the first time the two counties had two separate elections on the same day. She also said the technology is fairly new.
“With our voting system in the state of Georgia, there are many parts to it. I mean you got to figure, you got the poll pad, the BMD, the tabulators, then you got humans involved,” Gay said. “So I mean there are many steps in the process where something could go wrong. It’s the fact of being able to address, adjust, and correct it, and that’s what we did.”
She said results for the election should still be certified by 6 p.m. on Friday. None of the commissioners we reached out to would grant us an interview.
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