WAMPSVILLE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV)– It was a late night for many Central New Yorkers Tuesday who were waiting for election results to be posted to county websites. Then, when voters and candidates woke up Wednesday morning the results on some county websites differed from the NYS Board of Elections website.
Among the counties experiencing issues was Madison County which had about an hour delay in posting election results Tuesday night. Republican County Election Commissioner Mary Egger says they used a new website vendor this year to post results and there may have been some technical issues because of the new way absentee ballots are counted starting on Election Night.
“It is the report from our voting machine, it is the report from our absentee scanning and then our early voting is the same as that so it’s kinda just getting all of those reports and mashing them all together so it was a lot of communication back and forth between the vendors but it seems to be up and running and running pretty smoothly now.”
Mary Egger, Madison County Republican BOE Commissioner
However, the County BOE wasn’t aware of the discrepancy in voting numbers from their website compared to the state website until NewsChannel 9 brought it to their attention. The commissioners said they hadn’t heard anything from the state and when NewsChannel 9 reached out to the State BOE they said they were looking into the issue. An hour or so later and the numbers on the Madison County BOE had been changed to reflect the same numbers reported by the state.
“You’re looking at three different vendors, two different reports so we just want to make sure everything is there and is counted and we’re just checking the numbers, that’s what we do.”
Mary Egger, Madison County Republican BOE Commissioner
Similar issues unfolded in Oneida County which uses the same reporting website as Madison County. Their results weren’t posted online until the middle of the night and they also had discrepancies on their website compared to the state’s website. NewsChannel 9 reached out to Oneida County to see what happened but didn’t hear back. A few hours later and the discrepancies were fixed.
The Oneida County Board of Elections released the following statement Wednesday:
To get results to the candidates and public as fast as possible, the Oneida County Board of Elections (OCBOE) like BOEs across the state and country have turned to computerized systems to tabulate results. These systems are approved by the New York State Board of Elections but did not perform as they had in prior elections and in testing performed days before the General Election. We will find out why the systems did not perform and demand answers and solutions from the providers.
In the meantime, we would like to be clear, registered voters in this county were able to cast votes and we were able to tabulate the votes. There is no issue with the integrity of this election. The issue was the ability to upload the data to the public facing pages.
We are disappointed because we take pride in the speedy and accurate uploading of our data on Election Night. That said, our main concern is with the constitutional rights of Oneida County’s voters and that is our highest priority. We want to reiterate that every vote that was cast was counted.
Oneida County Board of Elections Commissioners Sarah F. Bormann and Nichole D. Shortell
