Glitches delay vote count in Bollinger County

MARBLE HILL, Mo. -- Bollinger County's election Tuesday dragged on late into the night as election officials wrestled with technical glitches to count all the votes.

All the votes were counted by 11 p.m., County Clerk Diane Holzum said.

None of the contests was close, and the final tallies didn't change the outcomes.

Problems with a new scanner that reads the ballots and counts the votes caused the delay, Holzum said.

The scanner is more sensitive than the past machine to even the slightest imperfections in the ink on printed ballots, the county clerk said.

"It kept stopping," she said. Election officials then had to run those ballots back through the scanner.

"We just had to make sure that the ballots were counted," Holzum said.

She expects the manufacturer of the scanner to adjust the equipment in an effort to prevent such a glitch in the November election.

A total of 1,901 county residents, or 14 percent of registered voters, cast ballots in Tuesday's election.

Voters handily approved a countywide sales-tax increase by a vote of 1,187 for to 612 against.

A $1.5 million bond issue for improvements to the Meadow Heights school complex passed by a vote of 493 for to 203 against. The measure garnered more than 70 percent approval, well above the 57 percent margin needed for approval, election officials said.

In the only contested primary race, Republican Dana Fulbright defeated Linda Schreckenberg. Fulbright received 888 votes compared to 352 for Schreckenberg.

Fulbright will face off against Democrat Patti Barrett in the November election.