Voters electing a new Rockville mayor and four City Council members faced glitches at the polls Tuesday morning.
All voters whose addresses start with a 5 — or 2,800 residents — had been marked as absentee voters in a training database used for testing by the State Board of Elections.
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The board mistakenly sent Rockville the training database.
Rockville poll officials caught the glitch within five minutes of the polls’ 7 a.m. opening, according to Rockville spokesman Tony Ruffin.
They were able to resolve the problem within 10 to 15 minutes.
“We were able to offer the affected residents the option to return to the polls or to go to City Hall to vote,” Ruffin said.
Polling staff had to manually encode the access cards of
affected voters.
The staff kept a written list of every person who had his or her card manually encoded, for review after the elections to ensure proper voting.
Six of 10 polling places had the greatest number of affected voters.
“It was human error on our part. We’re sorry for that,” said Ross Goldstein, deputy administrator for the Board of
Elections.
