Beach elections official: Whatever could go wrong with count, did

VIRGINIA BEACH

Delays in reporting the city's election results Tuesday night, followed by three days of counting absentee ballots that could have swayed several races, frustrated many voters, politicians and campaign workers.

"There is no reason in the world that we should know who the president of the entire United States is before we know the results of the local election," said City Council member Jim Wood, adding, "There is something seriously wrong with the system."

Some city election administrators maintained that the process went mostly according to plan, although,

- By midnight on Election Day, results from many of the city's 95 precincts had not been released to the public.

- Workers across the city tried in vain to phone in results of voting in at least 18 precincts.

- Results from the final precinct weren't delivered to the registrar's office until after 1 a.m. Wednesday.

- Paper ballots were used instead of computers for the first several hours at the Seatack Precinct, where 500 people waited for the doors to Mount Olive Baptist Church to open after 6 a.m. The chief of the polling place had overslept.

About 200,000 registered voters in the city, or 70 percent, cast ballots. Nearly 27,000 voted absentee - far more than city officials expected, according to Tim Barrow, vice chairman of the local electoral board. Officials had to stop early counting of those ballots to focus on the flood of people who wanted to vote absentee in person, he said.

"Coming up with a resolution of how to deal with those ballots and get an early count will be a big thing we're going to have to look at," Barrow said Friday.

Officials spent two days counting absentee ballots in 2004, compared to three this year, about what Registrar Pat Harrington said she expected. This year's election drew twice as many absentee ballots, and unlike 2004, it included local races that could have been determined by those votes.

Anne Rinehart, chief of absentee ballots, and 18 other officials started reviewing and tallying the absentee ballots about 5 a.m. Tuesday. They counted for 24 hours straight before stopping for a few hours of sleep.

By noon Wednesday, she and about 15 others were back at work, this time until 5 p.m.

A dozen workers resumed counting again at 10 a.m. Thursday. Twelve hours later, with the end in sight, a memory card malfunctioned and wiped out the results of 600 ballots. Those would have to be recounted.

The ordeal led an exasperated Harrington to invoke her own version of Murphy's Law. "If it could go wrong in this election, it did," she said.

Tuesday night, vote totals trickled out to the public, leaving many clamoring for results.

Mayor Meyera Oberndorf's husband, Roger, drove to the registrar's office to learn the outcome of his wife's race with Will Sessoms. He was furious that results from only 5 percent of precincts were available several hours after polls closed.

"The administration of this election was horrendous," Roger Oberndorf said Wednesday, before learning that a trove of absentee ballots had yet to be tallied. "The confusion last night was amazing."

Equipment, supplies and - most important - voting results from the Oceana precinct didn't arrive at the registrar's office until about 1:20 a.m. Wednesday. The polling official shrugged and offered apologies for arriving more than six hours after polls closed. Harrington stood speechless.

Hours later, the registrar still had no idea why he had been so late.

"I was just glad to see him," she said.

Precinct officials should have reported their results, or dropped off their supplies, paperwork and voting receipts, by 10:30 p.m., said Barrow.

He said some precinct chiefs work for hours trying to balance the number of ballots cast with the numbers listed in the precinct poll books.

"We don't want them to stay at the precinct until 1 a.m.," he said.

More than 1,600 election officials were recruited to help in the Beach this year, compared to about 700 in 2004. Each received $115.

"Without those people, it would have been nightmarish," Barrow said.

City officials hope to finish certifying the election results next week. Partial results from the absentee count were made available late Thursday, and final, unofficial results were posted Friday.

Harrington, the registrar, said she and other election officials will discuss what worked well - and what needs improvement - after a special election in January.

"Overall," Barrow said, "the process went remarkably well, with the exception of the problems that came up at the Seatack precinct."

Pilot writer Deirdre Fernandes contributed to this report.

Shawn Day, (757) 222-5131, shawn.day@pilotonline.com