Blurred NB ballots caused problems

By Barbara Brown
Ballots in the North Branch southern precinct caused some major headaches for head election judge Bridgitte Konrad last Tuesday night.
Konrad said election night that counting was delayed in the south precinct, the Chisago County Senior Center, because the printed ballots that were delivered for use in that precinctís polls were severely smudged.
ìApparently they didnít wait long enough in between copies when they printed them,î Konrad said. ìThey just stacked them on top of each other and they got so smudged you couldnít read them.î
Konrad said she had to order new ballots to be delivered Tuesday because only one out of every four was able to be used.
Not only were most of the ballots smudged, but the others were hard to read.
Konrad said she and other election judges had to pair up and duplicate ballots on ones that were not able to be read by the counting machine.
According to state law, two election judges from different political parties must agree on how the ballot reads and recast it.
ìI didnít want the votes to just not count,î Konrad said. ìWe called the Secretary of Stateís office and got some guidance.î
The North Branch numbers were reported around 3 a.m. to the County Auditorís office.
Voter turn-out all over Chisago County was high ñ with an average of 80.09 percent ñ Nov. 5 as residents headed to the polls to elect candidates for federal, state and local government office.
New voter registrations also impacted turn-out results.
Stacy had 632 voters registered at 7 a.m. Nov. 5, but by the end of the day, about 115 new registrations were received.
About 80 of those had never registered before, while the others included name changes.
Harris brought in 91 new voter registrations, up from the 705 registered at 7 a.m. Nov. 5.
A total of 532 people voted in Harris in the first election since the city was divided into two precincts.
In Precinct A, 81 new voters were registered while 10 new registrations were taken at Precinct B.
ìThe day went smoothly,î said Kim Hugger, Harris clerk.
ìThere were lines all day, but it was steady,î she said.
ìThe counting took longer because there were two precincts and we had to separate the ballots and hand count them.î
Danielle Strenke contributed to this report.

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