Monroe County election results not impacted by computer issues, BOE says – Democrat & Chronicle
Monroe County elections commissioners Wednesday said its computer system was overwhelmed by the scope of the Election Day task, causing issues with the reporting but nothing that brings the totals into question.
“The results are not in question,” the GOP and Democratic elections commissioners — Lisa Nicolay and Jackie Ortiz, respectively — said at a news conference Wednesday.
On Tuesday night, the board of elections website was not providing vote counts throughout the evening, as it typically does. This prompted the commissioners to put PDF document versions on the site, which muddled matters more, especially when the elections board was able to successfully upload data from a secondary site and the resulting numbers were confusing alongside the earlier totals.
Election results:Monroe and surrounding counties
“We went to the candidate saying, ‘You won,’ and then it was, ‘Wait a second,'” said local lawyer Nathan Van Loon, who was the treasurer for Family Court Judge Deral Givens, who did win and retain his judgeship.
This was the first year, Nicolay said, when available absentee and early voting totals were uploaded with the ongoing Election Day count, and the system was apparently choked by the amount of data. The change was made by the state legislature to provide more information on Election Day.
“The law changed because everyone wanted to know who was going to win or lose on Election Night,” Nicolay said.
She and Ortiz said they resorted to the PDFs so something was public, only then to get the system working at the second location where vote totals were taken and recorded. As always, there were representatives of both major parties, they said.
Ortiz said the Board of Elections and the county are investigating whether the problem was a software or connectivity issue, or possibly both. The problems illustrate the need to continue to modernize, she said.
Both commissioners stressed that there are the bipartisan checks and balances.
GOP congressional candidate and former Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary initially called for an investigation into the voting; Nicolay said she supported Singletary and wanted him to win but could say with assurance that the totals that, for now, showed him significantly behind incumbent Democrat Joseph Morelle were accurate.
Shortly after the news conference, Singletary conceded, saying the explanation satisfied his concerns.
Oneida County also reported issues with the uploading of its totals Tuesday night.
Nicolay said the system had been tested, but in smaller chunks than the mass of data that was fed into it Tuesday.