A clerical error in the counting of Dallas County’s absentee ballots in the 2016 general election has led to an adjustment in the totals but no changes to the winners of the races, according to a statement issued Tuesday by the Dallas County Auditor’s office.
Kim Owen, Dallas County Deputy Auditor and Deputy Election Commissioner, said the discrepancy in the Dallas County totals were noticed when the Iowa Secretary of State’s office performed the customary post-election audit.
“Everything was counted,” Owen said, “but when we took that and uploaded it to the reporting tool, some batches were left out. That resulted in 5,842 ballots that were not added to our total.”
The omitted absentee ballots amounted to about 13 percent of the 44,430 votes cast in Dallas County in the November election.
The auditor’s office uses a centralized counting machine that scans the ballots and counts them, Owen said. Once scanned, the ballots are uploaded to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office by using a “reporting tool,” she said.
“But this wasn’t an equipment error,” Owen said. “It was a human error. When we have that many absentee ballots, we run them through in batches, and we did batches of 500. So we had, I think, 44 batches, and we had to click on every single one to move them over to the reporting tool. During that, we missed some batches. We don’t know how, but they didn’t get clicked on to get transferred over. We’re just very sorry but glad that it was caught.”
Even after adding in the omitted ballots and recalculating new grand totals, all the race results remained unchanged in the federal, state and county contests.
“The numbers stayed very proportional,” Dallas County Auditor Julia Helm said. “The percentages stayed very similar to the canvas. It’s one of those things, you know, and I just assume it was the pressure of the night.”
Helm said she will introduce some procedural changes to further minimize the risk of errors.
“We’re putting things in place so it won’t ever happen again,” she said. “There’ll be cross-checks. There’ll be more than one or two people checking those numbers, too.”
Helm also mentioned attending a meeting Friday of the Iowa State Association of County Auditors, her first since being elected in November and assuming her office Jan. 1. She said the association’s executive committee voted to oppose Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate’s proposed voter ID bill.
“I’m on the fringe of that,” Helm said, “but it’s the ID cards. They think it’s redundant to do a separate ID card when we already issue voter registration cards.”
“I don’t really have an opinion either way,” Helm said. “I know with our equipment we can make something happen almost immediately. I would say we probably have 75 percent of our voters handing us their driver’s licenses now. They feel they’re part of the process when they scan their own driver’s license. I think that gives them confidence.”
Pate claims his bill will further ensure the integrity of Iowa’s elections. Critics of the proposal say it aims to suppress voter turnout among Democrats.
The following tables show the original results, the revised results and the difference in all Dallas County general elections races.
“The omitted absentee ballots amounted to about 13 percent of the 44,430 votes cast in Dallas County in the November election.”
13 percent? They misplaced 13 percent? That’s inexcusable. Though it bears out the end results this time would not have changed, they could have. Who is to say the results will not be skewed should such a blatant and unforgivable omission as this happen again?