After huddling behind closed doors and ignoring media inquiries for most of the day, the DCBOEE has issued a statement on last night’s voting irregularities.

From: DC Board of Elections and Ethics
Date: September 10, 2008
Contact: Dan Murphy (202) 727-2511
dmurphy@dcboee.org

Analysis of the Unofficial Election Night Results from the September 9,
2008 District of Columbia Congressional and Council Primary Election

After conducting a thorough review of all of precinct cartridges, the DC Board
of Elections and Ethics is satisfied that the last unofficial results report released on
Election Night provided an accurate representation of the votes that were cast
and counted. The Board stands by this report.

During election night, it is the Board’s standard practice to generate unofficial
results reports, and to thereafter conduct an internal audit process to verify the
accuracy of the results contained in these reports. During this process, it was
determined that one defective cartridge caused vote totals to be duplicated
into multiple races on the summary report issued by our office. The Board
immediately caught and addressed this error, as is reflected in the last unofficial
results report issued on Election Night.

Errol R. Arthur, Board Chairman, stated, “Both the Board and Sequoia Voting
Systems are currently conducting comprehensive reviews into how the cartridge
reading error occurred. We will continue to work with them to identify how to
prevent this issue in future elections.”

Mayor Adrian Fenty announced earlier today that acting D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles is investigating how and why the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics initially reported thousands of apparently erroneous write-in results in yesterday’s primary. Indeed, those who were watching closely last night as the DCBOEE updated the election returns on its new web site saw that there were an extremely high number of write-in votes recorded in the early results: something like 1,500 write-ins in the Ward 2 Dem race, slightly fewer in the At-large GOP race, and around 1,000 in the Shadow Senator Dem race, too. All of those numbers have since been revised down. The DCBOEE sent around what looked like revised results early this morning, although they still say 142 out of 143 precincts reporting. Ward 2 now shows only 14 write-in votes, the GOP At-large race has 18, and the Dem Shadow Senator contest has 404.

Photo by brownpau