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By: Emily Hone BLACKFOOT — A computer programming glitch left candidates and voters alike in the dark about the outcome of Tuesday’s primary election, and had courthouse employees working until the following morning to get the ballots counted correctly.
When the problem was fixed and ballots in two-thirds of the county’s precincts recounted, Bingham County Sheriff Dave Johnson had successfully fought off a challenge from former sheriff C. Dayle Holm. J. Scott Andrew withstood a challenge from public defender Cindy Campbell, Donavan Harrington will be the new county commissioner replacing Wayne Brower come January, and Commissioner Cleone Jolley out polled challenger Robert Butler to retain his District 1 seat. Andrew, Harrington and Jolley will be unopposed in the November general election.
County Clerk Sara Staub said a rotation programming error in the sheriff’s race caused the problem.
She explained that state law requires when there is more than one candidate for an office that each of the names appears in first position on the ballot in an equal number of precincts, and the computer in the vote counter is programmed to count accordingly.
Something happened at the programming level that caused votes to be assigned to the wrong candidate, but only in the sheriff’s race and between Holm and Johnson, she said.
The problem was discovered at 3 a.m. when the votes for the Riverside and Shelley 13 precincts were printed out, Staub said.
“Roger Clark was okay, but the count showed that Dayle Holm and Dave Johnson had each lost badly in their home precincts. That was so unusual we called the secretary of state’s office. They told us how to do a check, and when we found the first wrong rotation, we had to check all of them.”
But first a programmer was summoned from Idaho Falls to fix the problem and he arrived at 3:30 a.m., reprogrammed the computer, and counting resumed.
Ballot counting was not finished until 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, Staub said.
“It has not been shown that placing a candidate’s name first on the ballot makes a difference in the outcome of an election and we’ve tried to get the law changed, but it hasn’t happened yet,” Staub said.
According to the county’s Web site, only 6,702 of the county’s 19,479 registered voters cast ballots in the primary election, and 621 were absentee. By candidate the votes for contested county races are as follows:
Sheriff — Dave Johnson, 2,586; C. Dayle Holm, 2,005; Roger Clark, 986.
Prosecuting Attorney — J. Scott Andrew, 3,190; Cindy Campbell, 2,281.
County Commission District 1 — Cleone Jolley, 3,239; Robert Butler, 2,113.
County Commissioner District 2 — Donavan Harrington, 1,107; Whitney Manwaring, 920; Paul Schneider, 775; Don Hale, 690; John “Butch” Hulse, 600; Audrey Stanfield, 427; Ralph L. Powell, 411; Chuck Mitchell, 318; Owen Wilmot, 150.
The Bingham County vote for all races is available on the county Web site.
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