Sedgwick County election woes will be met "with a fine-tooth comb"
Frustration abounded after the polls had closed on Election Day in Sedgwick County.
Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman felt the same.
"The Election Day itself was going very well," Lehman said. "I was really excited about that, but then to have the reporting go wrong again was very frustrating."
Results were slow to be reported by the county - not being completed until the Wednesday morning hours. Lehman said there was trouble closing down some voting machines in the district. There were also paper ballots to be counted at the election office, as well as voters casting ballots well after 7 p.m. due to long lines at polling places.
The issue of the county website showing 100 percent precinct reporting when it was yet to be complete came up again, as it did in the primary election. Lehman said she was assured by the voting vendor that that issue was resolved. She said the election office has to use the current vendor because of its voting equipment.
Lehman vows to identify and correct the flaws.
"We will go through every step with a fine-tooth comb - with the vendor, and with just making sure we have everything exactly right," she said. "My plan is to create a kind of dummy election and go through this again, and make sure we can recreate - because we did testing, but when it's on a broader scale, that's when the issue popped up. The testing was not showing this."
Voter turnout was under what was anticipated in the county.
"I was hoping for about 70 percent voter turnout, and we had around 65 percent voter turnout, so it was quite a bit lower than we've had in past presidential election years," Lehman said. "The last presidential election, we had a USD 259 bond issue on the ballot, as well. There were a lot of contested races in 2008, locally, and there just weren't as many this time."
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