A member of the St. Thomas-St. John District Board of Elections said Friday the board finally has a “good process” for counting the more than 800 absentee, provisional and mail-in provisional ballots they have received, or anticipate receiving, since the Aug. 2 primary.
Initially there were glitches, according to St. Thomas-St. John District Board Chairman Arturo Watlington Jr.
“What forced us to start counting the ballots by hand (Aug. 2) was the decision that was made by the staff, without the knowledge and consent of the board, to program the machine that is going to count the absentee ballots to count by districts,” Watlington said.
He explained that St. Thomas-St. John district is broken up into a number of voting districts or polling sites and that, while many of them were consolidated during the primary, the machine was still programmed to count the ballot based on where each resident is registered to vote. On Sunday, when the board began counting the absentees, the Elections System did not have an alphabetized listing of voters by district, so Elections staff members had to “spend hours” matching each absentee application to the affidavit voters sign when the come into the Elections office.
“The problem, along with not having the listing, is that the applications we sent out did not necessarily identify what district each voter is a resident of,” Watlington added. “So one of the major tasks was matching the names, and it took us about four hours on Sunday just to sort out what we had.”
Once an alphabetized list was generated the pace picked up, and by Friday the board had counted a total of 808 absentee ballots.
“We also opened and sorted 55 provisional ballots, which now have to be checked by the staff to ensure that these are registered voters and to make sure they voted within their party,” Watlington said. “We’re due to go back in (Saturday) at 1 p.m. to start counting the mail-in provisionals, which are about 130-plus.”
Watlington said Elections also received 32 absentee mail-in ballots Wednesday, along with another 30 on Thursday, and those still have to be counted.
“We expect at least another 40 after that, since they take a little time to come through the mail,” he said. Asked when the board expects to release the final numbers, Watlington said the Elections System has to wait until at least Aug. 12 to close off the absentees, and after that, the primary will be certified once all provisional ballots are counted.
A special meeting of the St. Thomas-St. John Board is scheduled for Monday and along with giving an additional update on the numbers, board members are expected to discuss a challenge filed by gubernatorial candidate Adlah “Foncie” Donastorg, who has raised some concerns about non-party voters participating in the primary.
In other elections news, the St. Croix District board released a statement to voters Friday apologizing for a programing error that resulted in some of the machines losing their audio capabilities during the primary. After the Aug. 2 primary, Elections Supervisor Caroline Fawkes spoke to the Source about glitches seen in one or two machines that provide audio instructions for residents with disabilities, and said that everything will be fixed by the November general election.
“After the coding for the AutoMark was corrected by a … technician, who was responsible for coding the software, the audio on all AutoMarks were fully functional in the St. Croix District,” said the statement from St. Croix District Board chairman Adelbert Bryan. “However, all other functions of the AutoMark were fully functional, which allowed the electors to efficiently and accurately mark their ballots, which allowed them to cast their vote.”
