Human error at Chesapeake polls led to mix-up about who won seat

CHESAPEAKE

Suzy Kelly was among the Republican City Council candidates Tuesday night who joined hands before a cheering crowd and raised their arms in victory.

A mile and a half way, a disappointed Vice Mayor Dwight Parker left the Democratic gathering, thinking he had lost the final council seat to Kelly by a mere six votes.

In less than an hour, word of a mix-up reached the candidates: Parker had apparently held onto his council seat by 41 votes.

How could this happen? Chesapeake uses electronic voting machines, not paper ballots, and this was a local election with relatively low turnout.

Although some voters distrust the new technology, city voting officials say that it wasn’t a problem with the electronic machines themselves. The numbers fluctuated, they said, because poll workers, in two precincts, made mistakes when they phoned in the “tapes,” or results, printed out from the precinct voting machines.

In one precinct where Parker racked up more than 400 votes, a voting machine was left out of the phoned-in results entirely.

In another, a poll worker reported the results from one machine but left out all the others. Both mistakes were caught later on election night.

“People do make errors, particularly after working 15 or 16 hours,” said Chesapeake General Registrar Ginny Garrett. “That’s why they’re 'unofficial’ results.”

Garrett said there are no plans to change the way voting results are phoned in for future elections.

Kelly said she doubts that the outcome will change in her favor, but she is seriously considering asking for a recount if it will help improve the public’s confidence in the voting system.

Because the margin is less than half of 1 percent, she will not be charged for the recount.

“The process does need to be looked at,” Kelly said.

“We’ve got a huge election coming up in November. We certainly want to make sure the process is correct and legitimate for those elections, in particular.”

Al Spradlin, chairman of the city’s electoral board, said a mistake like this normally would not have affected an election, but the combination of extremely low turnout and the high number of candidates made for a race in which 100 votes can turn an outcome.

But many elections these days seem to come down to a small number of votes. Think the 2000 presidential campaign recount in Florida. Or the 2006 Virginia Senate race, which ended in victory for Jim Webb by a few thousand votes.

In Chesapeake, Councilwoman Rebecca Adams lost the 2004 mayor’s race by 143 votes.

State elections officials say it is common for precinct poll workers to phone in unofficial results to a central registrar’s office.

They say that Tuesday’s case proves that an extensive “checks and balances” system, which requires multiple reviews of the results, works.

The way it’s done now, with voting results being read over the phone, leaves plenty of room for error, said Pete Burkhimer, chairman of the Chesapeake Republican Party.

Especially in an election like Tuesday’s, in which each precinct read vote totals for 15 council candidates, six School Board candidates, and two mayoral candidates.

“All that’s got to happen is something has to get off a column,” Burkhimer said. “And all of the sudden, something’s out of whack.”

It was tough to tell Kelly she had lost after being declared a winner just moments earlier, Burkhimer said.

“It’s like giving a kid a big Christmas present and snatching it away,” Burkhimer said. “It’s like giving them a lump of coal instead.”

Said Kelly: “I was a winner for about 30 minutes.”

Parker found out that he had won from a newspaper reporter when he got home.

“No,” he said, in disbelief. “Come on.”

On Thursday, the voting registrar’s office released a new set of numbers showing that Parker had beaten Kelly by 38, not 41 votes.

“The number keeps changing,” Kelly said. “So what’s going on?”

Staff writer Dave Forster contributed to this report.

Mike Saewitz, (757) 222-5207, mike.saewitz@pilotonline.com