It seems to be the busiest time of year for the Bladen County Board of Election. This week the local board held a meeting to discuss their technical difficulties among other things.
The board had to deal with the issue of the machine used to count the absentee ballots. The last set of ballots that were processed were found to be off by one vote. The board discussed how to proceed.
The voting machine was off by one vote and two ballots were set aside, but board members were uncertain as to which ballot had not been counted. Board of Elections member Brian Hehl noted the board has no way to know which ballot the machine did not read. He said the board had two options. He suggested either to do a hand eye recount or to zero out the machine, start over and resubmit all of the ballots to the machine.
The board then discussed how to handle processing the envelops since there are ballots involved in an investigation by the State Board of Elections. It was decided to copy all of the envelopes and let the investigators determine which envelopes they wished to review.
It was also learned that the voting machine at the Bladen County Public Library One Stop site had encountered an issue with the thumb drive. Board of Elections Director Cynthia Shaw explained a voting machine at the site had an issue and it was sending a report at various intervals to the thumb drive and in essence, filled the thumb drive where it could not hold any more data. Shaw said the Board of Elections staff went and installed a new thumb drive. Shaw said, apparently, the manufacturer didn’t realize the voting machine would do that.
It was decided that the voting machine from the library would be brought to the Board of Elections following the close of One Stop voting and locked in a room. On Monday the board of elections and poll judges from the library voting site will rerun the ballots cast and put them all on one thumb drive.
The board also clarified that when assisting a voter, the voter must meet one of the following criteria: the voter must be legally blind, illiterate, or suffer from a physical handicap. The voter must state they wish to receive assistance and either identify the assistant if they are with them or a poll judge can appoint someone to assist the voter.
The board also learned the polls in Bladenboro were impacted for a brief period of time due to the internet going down. Shaw said the polling location was down for about 1 ½ hours. Hehl said voters were allowed to vote.
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