There were very few problems that popped up during last week’s election in Washtenaw County.
There were about 51,000 early votes cast in Washtenaw County and about the same number of absentees.
County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum says the county numbers were about the same as four years ago. He also says the success of early voting was a bit of a surprise.
“We had such a large turnout, such an unexpectedly large utilization of early voting that keeping up with supplies, keeping up with toner cartridges, because the early votes were basically primarily ballot on demand.”
Kestenbaum says early voters had to have their own ballot printed off since each location served numerous precincts. He says a delay in getting absentee ballot numbers in from Ann Arbor was due to an unexpected illness in the city clerk’s office.
UPDATE -- Ann Arbor officials dispute Kestenbaum's account of what caused the delay. City Clerk Jackie Beaudry says on Election Night, one of their three high-speed scanners experienced a technical problem that resulted in a slower than expected scanning and counting of ballots. She says the loss of one scanner for a period of time during the counting on Tuesday resulted in a later than expected final tally and reporting of absentee ballots.
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