Published: May 15, 2008 09:54 am      

Too little, too late — Election night count must be improved

Enough is enough. Year after year, election after election, we and other media outlets wait — and wait and wait and wait — for vote totals from Mercer County.

What is the problem?

Early into the counting Tuesday night our court house reporter called to let us know there had been a glitch in one of the voting machines. Long-time journalists would be rich if they had a dime for every time they’d heard the phrase “the machine has broken down” during the counting of votes on election night in Mercer County.

This year, the report of the problem seemed to indicate it would be business as usual at the Mercer County Court House on election night. Unfortunately, business as usual means late returns — much later than neighboring counties and others across the state.

An example: McDowell County allowed voters the option of using paper ballots or electronic voting during Tuesday’s election — essentially, it would seem, increasing the workload on poll workers and counting officials. Yet by 10 p.m., all vote totals — unofficial, but final — had been reported from McDowell.

Monroe County was also quick on the count Tuesday, and their county workers were extremely well-organized in providing vote totals to journalists calling in for results. Monroe, by the way, had their votes tallied by 10:30 p.m.

In addition to McDowell and Monroe counties, Summers, Greenbrier, Mingo, Wayne and Wyoming are among other counties in West Virginia that have efficiently, swiftly and professionally provided election night vote tallies to the Daily Telegraph in the past. Although some of the counties may have had a glitch or two in past elections, such problems are the exception and not the rule.

Not so in Mercer.

While other counties begin providing precinct totals as early as 9:30 p.m. — most counties will update the press with new tallies as each precinct is counted — it is not uncommon for Mercer to report its first numbers after 11 p.m. And, in recent elections, there have been occasions when the first vote totals — usually for 20 precincts of the county’s 61 — have not been provided to the press until after 11:30 p.m.

In one election, the Daily Telegraph had no vote totals from Mercer County until close to a quarter of midnight — the magic hour at which our newspaper was supposed to be rolling on the press.

In attempting to report the results of Tuesday’s primary election, the situation in Mercer County was typical of that in years past — the sluggish release of vote totals to the press.

And it is the press — newspapers, television, radio and Internet — that is charged with providing election results to the people. It is a job we, and our colleagues, take seriously.

Every year Mercer County has plenty of excuses why the votes are not counted and released to the press quicker. But we have had enough of the rationalizations and attempts at absolution.

We must do better.

This year, Monroe and Greenbrier counties had new websites to update the public with vote totals as they were counted — yet we can’t even get the tallies of half of Mercer County’s precincts more than four hours after the polls have closed.

This is unacceptable.

Mercer County must take a hard look at its election night counting procedures, and find out why its numbers are coming in late. Officials owe it to the candidates, the people and, yes, even the press to provide this information in an timely and accurate manner.