Greene County: Some Fairborn votes not tallied in final count

New voting equipment in Greene County led to a delay in reporting results Tuesday night and is forcing the elections board to amend the results today for races in Fairborn, according to Llyn McCoy, Greene County elections board director.

The elections board is holding an emergency meeting this afternoon to vote on accepting the amended results.

>> Bob Stone wins first direct vote for mayor in Beavercreek’s history

McCoy said there were 53 votes that didn’t get included in the final, unofficial results for Fairborn races.

“It changed the vote totals, but it didn’t change the vote spread,” McCoy said.

This was the first election for Greene County to use new voting equipment provided by Dominion Voting Systems.

McCoy said there was a problem with one of the machines that’s used to read the USB drives on which all the county’s votes are stored. That delayed results from being reported and led to one of the USB drives from the Tri-County polling location in Fairborn not being included in Tuesday night’s totals.

>> Yellow Springs voters say ‘no’ to let teens, non-U.S. citizens vote

“There is a learning curve with the new equipment,” McCoy said.

Elections officials posted results publicly on the Greene County elections website as ballots and votes were tallied on computers. Updates came slowly and the final, unofficial results were not reported until approximately 11:30 p.m., more than an hour after vote tallies were finalized in other counties.

There were other problems reported with new voting equipment. The number and percentage of precincts counted were not initially reported with the vote tallies in Greene and Montgomery counties. That made it impossible to get an idea how many more votes needed to be counted and to gauge how close or distant races actually were.

>> Voters support several tax issues in Greene County

Officials said the feature on the new equipment that tracks precincts counted was not turned on and that data was not automatically included in the initial results.

McCoy said they will be considering adding one or more tabulation machines to get results reported faster.

She said overall the day at the polls “went well.”

“During the day, voters and poll workers reported they liked the equipment,” she said.

The elections board meets at 2 p.m. After the meeting, the amended results are expected to be posted on the elections board website.

About the Author