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Clerk: primary ran smoothly but polling-locator outage and touch-screen failures highlighted need for fixes
Summary
The county clerk reported that the primary election ran smoothly with about 500 judges, but committee members raised concerns about a nonworking polling-locator tool on election day and intermittent touchscreen failures at precincts; IT staff said vendor communication problems delayed detection and are being resolved.
The county clerk reported to the Taxes, Election & GIS Committee that the primary election proceeded on schedule with roughly 500 election judges and that most precincts opened on time, though staff handled a higher-than-usual number of call-offs by reassigning judges.
The clerk said provisional ballots (14 provisionals) are expected to be processed as signature verifications are completed and confirmed retab and final-canvas schedules. She also described rollout of a new statement-of-economic-interest system and warned officials to return the forms by May 1 to avoid a $15 late fee; the transcript also cited a subsequent $15 fee plus a $100 daily penalty starting May 16 per state statute as communicated by clerk staff.
A committee member raised an election-day problem: the polling-locator tool on the county website reportedly failed for some voters, and that failure was not detected in time. The committee was told that emails about the outage did not reach the vendor; Don, the county IT director, said vendor contact Bruce Harris had not received the interruption notices and that Bruce is now working to diagnose and fix the issue. The committee discussed whether a phone escalation protocol is needed on election day to ensure quick fixes.
Members also discussed touchscreen units: some precincts share tabulators and touchscreens; one committee member reported using a paper ballot when a touchscreen displayed an "incorrect password" message. The clerk and other members said they are evaluating whether to increase the number of touchscreens at some locations for the general election while retaining paper ballots as a backup.
No formal election-policy changes were voted at this meeting. IT staff were instructed to follow up on the polling-locator outage and to provide details on the touchscreen inventory and needs at a future meeting.
Next steps: IT to report back with vendor follow-up and a recommended escalation plan; clerk to finalize election-judge payroll and provide retab/final-canvas status to the committee.
