Duncan Seeks Resignation of Election Chiefs
Voting Problems Marred Primary Day

By Christian Davenport, Cameron W. Barr and Miranda S. Spivack
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 14, 2006

Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan called yesterday for the county's top two elections officials to be fired, saying they were responsible for the widespread voting problems that marred Tuesday's primary election.

Duncan's demand, joined by County Council President George L. Leventhal (D-At Large), came on a day of intense activity with the same basic intent: to find out what went wrong and who was to blame.

"I cannot recall a failure of local government like this," Leventhal said, adding that the county's Elections Board needs to be overhauled. "It is absolutely unacceptable and unconscionable."

The Republican governor, the Democrat-controlled legislature and embattled elections officials said it was imperative to figure out how to revamp voting procedures so that the November election is not even more of a debacle.

Voting at nearly every one of Montgomery's 238 polling places was delayed Tuesday -- in some cases for hours -- after elections officials forgot to distribute the plastic cards needed to activate the electronic voting machines. There also was chaos in Baltimore, where several elections judges failed to show up or were unfamiliar with the voting technology, and vote-counting in Prince George's County was marred by the failure to transmit results electronically from many precincts to the central elections office.

In a letter to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), Duncan (D) called for the dismissal of Nancy H. Dacek, president of Montgomery's Board of Elections, the five-member panel that is appointed by the governor. In a separate letter to Dacek, Duncan requested that she remove Margaret Jurgensen, the election director.

Unlike Dacek, Jurgensen is a county employee; the Board of Elections has the ability to fire her.

In an interview late yesterday, Dacek said she had not seen Duncan's letters. "The word 'scapegoat' comes to mind," she said of the call for her dismissal. "At this time, I have no intention of resigning. What the board and I intend is to study this whole issue and find out what really happened and then come to a decision."

She added, "We truly do not believe in rolling heads before there's been any kind of investigation."

Jurgensen could not be reached for comment. Elections Board spokeswoman Marjorie Roher said she was not available.

Roher identified Paul Valette as the elections operations manager who was supervising the staff that omitted the voting cards from the supply bags sent to precincts.

"Whatever went wrong on the operations side is my responsibility," Valette, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said last night in a telephone interview.

Because of the voting problems, Montgomery officials distributed up to 12,000 provisional paper ballots to voters. Officials also gave out 11,200 absentee ballots, 6,000 of which have been returned. The absentee ballots will begin to be counted today, the provisionals Monday.

The uncounted ballots could affect the outcomes of two House of Delegates races in the county, according to Samuel L. Statland, one of three voting members on the Board of Elections. Fewer than 400 votes separated Jeff Waldstreicher and Daniel Farrington, who were vying for District 18's third seat. In District 19, Benjamin Kramer led Paul Griffin by 238 votes.

Voters and elections judges yesterday recounted a litany of Election Day mishaps. In addition to the late arrival of the voting machine access cards, several elections judges said the electronic polling books at their precincts malfunctioned several times during the day.

In some instances, the polling books, which were used for the first time this year to verify voter registration, crashed when the voter access cards were inserted into them. Alan Fox, the chief judge at a Kensington polling place, said it happened a few times before the elections judges figured out how to reprogram the equipment, which took a little technical ingenuity.

Janet Millenson, a chief elections judge at a Potomac precinct, said the same thing happened at her polling place on a few occasions. The new machines were "not ready for prime time," she said. "Let's hope they get the resources they need to fix it by November."

At Sligo Middle School, the voter registration check-in machine crashed at least 12 times, said elections judge June Jeffries, a federal prosecutor. Poll workers also began to worry as some electronic cards stopped working, she said.

"The number of usable cards kept going down," Jeffries said. "We would wipe them off or rub them on our pants legs to try to get them to work again. I am livid. We are not failures as elections judges. . . . I want to know what happened and why we were in that position and why the voters were in that position."

When a Circuit Court judge ordered that polls stay open an extra hour in Montgomery, until 9 p.m., election officials were faced with even more problems.

Under state law, votes cast during an extended voting period must be on paper provisional ballots. But many polling places had used up those ballots during the morning delays. When Fox obtained a spare set of ballots, he realized they were marked for the wrong precinct. His was Precinct 18, but the ballots were marked for Precinct 16.

He said there was nothing he could do, so he told the voters to fill them out and hope for the best.

Meanwhile, in response to the myriad problems in Baltimore, Linda H. Lamone, administrator of the Maryland State Board of Elections, sent a letter to the state attorney general asking for the authority to take over election judge training and recruiting for the city.

In her letter, she noted that state officials received reports that judges were not trained on the electronic polling books. She added that one support technician in Baltimore "had encountered judges who were apparently intoxicated."

Lamone is also asking for permission to force the Montgomery County Board of Elections to detail what went wrong, and she said she was considering launching a full-scale investigation.

"The problem is we only have seven weeks" before the general election, she said. "That's not a long time we've got to get moving on this."

Henry Fawell, an Ehrlich spokesman, said the governor would also like a "comprehensive review of what happened [Tuesday]. And the governor's course of action will be based on the findings of that review."