INFORMATION RELEASE

Contact:         Tom Slockett

Johnson County Auditor and

Commissioner of Elections

Phone:            (319) 356-6004

^{Date:                        November 7, 2007}

All precinct voting equipment reported election results properly last night.  Each of the 41 precincts publicly posted results tapes from both pieces of voting equipment.  These tapes correctly represent every vote cast on the equipment on Election Day and are the same results tapes the Auditor’s Office used to produce the final verified preliminary election night results reported to the public.  The tapes will also be used by the Board of Canvassers to determine the official results of the election on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 1:00 p.m. 

Most Iowa City precincts modemed their paper ballot results to the Auditor’s Office.  The results were received correctly.  Last night we implemented a new procedure developed in conjunction with the Johnson County Information Services Department to import these paper ballot results into a reporting spreadsheet.  An error occurred during this process where data rows were mistakenly summed, and the test data used was insufficient to reveal the error.

The procedure added together the “Yes” totals for both public measures in each Iowa City precinct rather than reporting the two separately.  For example, in Iowa City Precinct 3 Public Measure C received 16 “Yes” votes and Public Measure D received 32 “Yes” votes.  Rather than reporting these as separate totals for each public measure, the procedure erroneously summed these totals and reported 48 as the “Yes” total for both measures.  The same erroneous combination of totals occurred with “No” votes, under-votes, over-votes, and write-ins because these outcomes appeared in multiple races, unlike individual candidate names. 

Incorrect imported totals and correct manually entered totals (pdf)

We discovered the error at approximately 9:30 p.m.  The correct information was immediately entered by hand and reported before 10:00 p.m.  After further research this morning, we determined and Information Services confirmed the cause of the problem as described above. 

Unfortunately we failed to discover the problem during testing, resulting in an incorrect outcome being reported on Public Measure C prior to 10:00 p.m.  Our testing procedures are being revised to prevent this from happening again.  We sincerely regret this error. 

County Auditor Tom Slockett will be available in the lobby of the Johnson County Administration Building at 4:30 p.m. today to answer further questions.