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Nobody knows who won any of the races that were contested in Pottawattamie County in Tuesday's elections, and the answers to those questions likely won't be known until sometime Thursday.
Tuesday's primary election was the first to be decided on the new electronic voting machines mandated by the federal government after the Florida debacle that marred the 2000 presidential election. The "plan," underscored by millions of dollars in federal funds to help purchase new voting machines statewide, was to avoid a repeat of 2000.
The plan didn't work - at least not here.
Questions arose shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday as the newly purchased equipment spit out the results of absentee voting - results that showed, at least among absentee voters, long-time incumbent Recorder John Sciortino losing to Republican challenger Oscar Duran by a 20-vote margin. The ballots were counted by hand to verify the questionable results, and the hand count showed the incumbent winning by a margin of 153 to 25.
As the clock approached midnight, Drake announced that the state auditor's office had given her permission to halt the count. The results from the 37 precincts that had been posted in the three hours since polls closed were considered suspect at best - certainly not to be trusted.
A hand count of all the ballots cast countywide Tuesday was slated to begin shortly after 10 a.m. today, following required approval of the old-fashioned, low-tech method by the Board of Supervisors.
The expectation is that the task could be completed in 16 hours, which should make the final tallies available sometime Thursday morning. High-tech - at least for the moment - has evolved into old-fashioned, slow ... and generally more reliable.
While the candidates and their supporters, anxious to learn if their effort bore fruit, are not likely to agree, the equally important task will be determining exactly what went wrong Tuesday - and making certain that it doesn't happen again.
