Dodge County Clerk Talks Primary Election Night Snags

(Juneau) The Dodge County Clerk’s Office reported some hiccups during Tuesday’s primary election ballot tallying process. Clerk Karen Gibson says a few municipalities ran low on physical ballots which required some voters to use the touchscreen voting method to cast their vote. 

“And we’ve had that, also in the past where I have printed ballots in house for those municipalities…however, my printer decided it wasn’t going to work,” says Gibson. “So, the municipalities were asking voters to use that touchscreen which you can use that. You don’t have to get that paper ballot that goes into the electronic machine. Anybody at anytime can use that touchscreen. A lot of municipalities were asking voters to use that touchscreen so they didn’t run out of that paper ballot.” 

Gibson says once the polls closed, her office receives results from local municipalities via a virtual private network. She says the system on their end was not getting those figures.  

“They weren’t talking to each other…what they refer to has making the handshake,” says Gibson. “Another way to solve this problem, all the municipalities could have driven their memory sticks in to our office and then we upload the results from the sticks. But because it was such a small, one race election I didn’t want to ask them to do that.”  

Instead, the county clerk’s office worked with the sheriff’s office to send out a RAVE alert to let area clerks know that they were not getting the voting numbers. Gibson says the municipal clerks then called her office and they had to input the votes manually. The whole issue, Gibson says wound up being a simple human error. She says voter turnout was 25-percent with 12,961 ballots cast.