JoCo leaders support election official despite prolonged delay releasing vote results
Johnson County commissioners voiced full support Thursday for Election Commissioner Ronnie Metsker, despite an election marred by an overnight delay in releasing voting results.
“I have to compliment you and your team,” Commissioner Steve Klika told Metsker at Thursday’s commission meeting.
Klika said he knew many voters and observers were frustrated that it took until Wednesday morning to get the final tally from Tuesday’s primary election. But he didn’t blame Metsker for a delay that kept election watchers across the country waiting for results in several high-profile races, including the still-undecided Republican primary for governor.
Klika also credited the vendor of Johnson County’s new voting machine system, Election Systems & Software of Omaha, for taking responsibility for the failure in the system’s inaugural use.
“How far can you beat somebody up when they admit there’s a mistake?” he said.
Commission Chair Ed Eilert and Commissioner Michael Ashcraft also told Metsker that they don’t hold him accountable for the poor outcome.
Commissioner Michael Brown went even further, praising Metsker and chastising The Kansas City Star’s editorial board for calling on Metsker to resign. The Star had pointed out that Metsker also presided over the November 2016 county election when it took until the next day for final results. At that time, the problem was blamed on old machines.
“It was reckless and irresponsible of the editorial board to call for the resignation of anyone in the newspaper when you didn’t have all the information,” Brown said.
Metsker was appointed by Secretary of State Kris Kobach but works closely with the county commission on election matters and must follow the county’s personnel and budget policies.
Metsker said the election process went extremely well until after the polls closed and the count started. The process of uploading the encrypted thumb drive counts from 192 polling locations into the vote-reporting software, which he said should have been “lightning fast,” instead slowed to a crawl and took about 12 hours.
Metsker said Election Systems & Software had eight of its finest technicians on site in Olathe, but they couldn’t figure out a way to speed up the process.
“We were perplexed and dismayed and very disappointed when all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t solve the problem,” Metsker said. “The wheel just turned and turned and turned like it was thinking.”
He said the company still doesn’t know what went wrong.
Eilert said the company knows it must fix the problem, and he expressed confidence it will do so before the November election. There’s a lot at stake because Metsker said the company has been paid less than $100,000 of the $10.5 million in county taxpayer dollars that it is owed underr the new system contract.
Metsker said about 1,800 provisional ballots and an unknown number of mail-in ballots have yet to be counted before the County Commission certifies the primary election results, at a meeting scheduled Monday morning.
This story was originally published August 9, 2018 at 2:52 PM.