A look at what went wrong in Shenango Valley voting

Commissioners said a final election tally will begin at 9 a.m. today.
BY MARY GRZEBIENIAK
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
MERCER, Pa. -- County elections director Jim Bennington told Mercer County commissioners Thursday that serious problems at 13 precincts Election Day were caused by an error he made when he programmed new electronic voting machines.
The problems, which left many morning voters unable to vote because there were not enough paper ballots to back up the machines, affected all the machines in the 13 precincts. Some would not operate, and others put the ballot up on the screen backward.
The problem, Bennington said, came about when the 13 precincts were separated from the other precincts in the county because they are in another congressional district. Formerly, the 13 were in the 3rd Congressional District but in 2000 became part of the 4th District. In addition, there was a machine malfunction in Delaware Township. This was a separate and unrelated problem, he said.
Bennington said that when he programmed the machines for the 4th District, he did not notice the improperly placed numeral "1" at the end of the word straight in a command for voting a straight party ballot. The software, which would have picked up some errors, did not recognize the numeral as an error because it had served a purpose in the previous election. The problem did not show up in several checks and pretests before the election, he said.
"It should have been caught. I didn't catch it," said Bennington, who oversaw the county computer system from 1982 to 1988 and has been a computer programmer and operator since 1962.
Criticism
Robert Lark, chairman of the Mercer County Democratic Party, called for Bennington's firing, saying voters in the heavily Democratic districts of the Shenango Valley were disenfranchised. The affected areas included Hermitage, Farrell, Wheatland, West Middlesex, Shenango Township and Sharon, where he said nearly 5,000 voters are registered.
He criticized Bennington for not having enough paper ballots in the precincts for backup or enough envelopes to put the paper ballots in once they were marked. He said one precinct worker went to a convenience store to buy envelopes. Commissioner Michele Brooks questioned why this happened when there were cases of printed envelopes at the courthouse.
Lark also asked why voting hours were not extended as was done in Allegheny County after problems surfaced there. Brooks replied that poll workers were directed to let anyone who got in line before poll closing to vote, no matter how long it took.
David George, mayor of West Middlesex, was a poll watcher for the Republican Party and said the machine at his precinct broke at 7:10 a.m. and no paper ballots arrived until 10:30 a.m. "They came all day," he said of the voters. "I had to keep telling them, 'Come back, come back, come back." He called the election "a tragedy."
Commissioners said a final election tally will begin at 9 a.m. today. Once those figures are available, commissioners will be able to determine how voting was affected.
Tried to help
When they were notified Tuesday of the problems, all three commissioners, who comprise the county election board, tried to help. Commissioner Brian Beader drove paper ballots to precincts. Commissioners Olivia Lazor and Brooks worked in the elections office, helping take calls from people questioning their registration status so elections workers would be free to deal with the problems, Lazor said.
Prothonotary Elizabeth Fair criticized Lazor and Brooks for working in the elections office Tuesday because they are elected officials. However, Brooks responded that she first polled three common pleas judges who deemed it acceptable. Lazor said a state elections official told her commissioners could help as long as they didn't count ballots or tell anyone how to vote.
Beader, who went into the elections office to copy ballots to take to the precincts, said he knew he put himself in a potential conflict, but said he had to weigh the fact that people were walking away from the precincts without voting because they had no ballots.
Question
Peggy Ruggles, a poll worker in Southwest Precinct 3, said poll workers there did not have enough envelopes, so she told voters to fold over their ballots for privacy. Ruggles also questioned the security and handling of the ballots and asked why they were not tallied at the precinct as in previous years, but taken to the courthouse before they were counted.
Beader said commissioners discovered that former practice of counting ballots in each precinct was incorrect and they corrected it in this election to conform to state law.
District Attorney James Epstein repeated Thursday that his investigation showed the election problems did not result from any intentional or criminal acts.
Commissioners said Thursday an investigation is going on to determine why things went wrong and to make sure it doesn't happen again.