D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty on Wednesday promised a full investigation by the District’s attorney general into the publication of thousands of inexplicable write-in votes that muddled ballot counting following Tuesday’s primary.
The latest breakdown for the Board of Elections and Ethics comes less than 60 days before the Nov. 4 presidential election, when D.C officials expect record turnout. The elections board, said Ward 2 D.C. Councilman Jack Evans, “needs to get its act together.”
“They’re going to have more [people voting] than ever in the history of this city and it’s a big deal,” Evans said. “This is the real deal. You’re going to end up looking like Florida. They need to examine what they did wrong, tell us what they did wrong and fix it.”
The chaos Tuesday night was kindled by the release of plainly dubious unofficial vote counts. In Evans’ race against Cary Silverman, for example, the elections board initially reported 1,554 write-in votes — and nearly 4,000 more total votes than the campaigns believed were actually cast.
Early returns in the race between at-large Councilwoman Carol Schwartz and Patrick Mara, too, showed 1,560 write-ins and about 3,000 more votes than participating voters. Mara, who later declared victory, described the debacle as an “extremely disappointing situation.”
Attorney General Peter Nickles launched an inquiry Wednesday. The elections board, in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon, claimed the snafu was caused by a single “defective cartridge” that “caused vote totals to be duplicated into multiple races on the summary report issued by our office.” Fenty said it would be “best to reserve judgment” until more information is available.
The hiccup appeared to be resolved by Wednesday morning and the board was standing by its claim that the ultimate count was accurate: Evans over Silverman 64 percent to 35 percent with 4,589 votes tallied and 14 write-ins; Mara over Schwartz 60 percent to 40 percent with 3,735 votes tallied and 18 write-ins.
But Silverman refused to concede.
“It is paramount that the people have confidence in the outcome of this election and know that it was not decided on incomplete or incorrect information,” he said.
Election blunders are nothing new for the District: During February’s presidential primary, many precincts exhausted their paper ballot supplies because the elections board failed to accurately predict massive turnout. Fenty responded by replacing the board chairman. The board’s longtime director, Alice Miller, resigned in June, adding to the tumult.
Examiner Staff Writer Leah Fabel contributed to this article.
