An unexpected error last night forced the recount of more than 20,000 ballots, and had election workers clocking hours into the morning. Missoula County Clerk and Recorder Vickie Zeier said they were just about finished up for the night when one of the tabulating workers accidentally zeroed her machine. The officer did save the work, but didn’t hit the “save to disk” option – which combines all the ballots on each machine. Zeier told MTN News that it didn’t take long to decide the only option was to do a recount.
“I felt the correct thing to do was to re-run all the ballots because – you’d have to understand the counting center process – but you can’t just go find those last 359,” she said.
Because the ballots come from various precincts and wards the number of votes couldn’t be retraced back with enough accuracy. The recount finished up at around 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday.
Full Article: Error forced recount of 20,000 Missoula ballots | KPAX.com | Missoula, Montana.