Montgomery, Md. Officials Trade Barbs

Voting was delayed last week in Montgomery after election officials failed to supply polling places with ATM-like cards needed to work the electronic machines. Because election officials lacked a system for delivering the cards quickly to polling places, voters had to cast provisional ballots. When precincts ran out of the paper ballots, voters at some sites were told to come back later.

When a Circuit Court judge allowed the polls to remain open an additional hour, county election officials had no quick way to alert the precinct judges of the development.

After the council meeting, Jurgensen said the county has outfitted 171 precincts with phone lines. Most of the polling places that don't have dedicated lines are at private facilities, such as churches and synagogues.

In 2002, the county allocated cellphones to election judges, but she said that many election judges didn't know how to use them and that many cellphones didn't get reception in the precincts.

Over the weekend, Lamone demanded that Jurgensen detail by tomorrow what went wrong and submit a plan to avoid similar problems in November. Jurgensen responded yesterday that the "failure of [Lamone's] vision partly contributed to this."

Plans and policies for the election are typically set in place 30 to 45 days before an election, Jurgensen said. The weeks leading up to the election are largely for testing equipment and fine-tuning plans. But this time, local boards were inundated with new directives from the state that "impacted our ability to stay focused," she said.

The training manuals for the county's 3,400 election judges "arrived piecemeal" from the state, in some cases as late as August, Jurgensen said. Lamone said chapters were delayed while the state office awaited a court ruling on the status of early voting.

Electronic poll books, which replaced the voting rolls that election judges use to check in voters, did not arrive until Aug. 14, Jurgensen said. Cables and other equipment needed to operate them didn't arrive until the week before the primaries.

Without time to test the poll books, county officials could not prepare election judges for potential problems. When the electronic devices crashed, many judges didn't know what to do, Jurgensen said.

Lamone said the poll books were delayed because their order could not be placed until the Board of Public Works signed off on the state contract.

After the primary voting chaos, County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) and Council President George L. Leventhal (D-At Large) called for the ouster of Dacek and Jurgensen, but Dacek opened her remarks yesterday by reiterating the three-member board's backing of Jurgensen.

She reminded the council that the board is in the process of hiring the Election Center, a nonprofit Texas organization of state election officials, to review its procedures before the November general election.

Council member Howard A. Denis (R-Potomac) questioned the ability of the Election Center to do an independent investigation, and critics said the group was allied with election officials and voting machine makers, such as Diebold Election Systems, which supplied Maryland's machines.

Marjorie Roher, a spokeswoman for the local board, said that the consulting arm of the Election Center is "not affiliated with Diebold in any way" and that the study would review management -- not equipment.

As election officials counted provisional ballots in neighboring Prince George's, state Senate candidate Bobby G. Henry, a lawyer and minister, filed a formal petition to the county's Board of Elections requesting a recount in his race against County Council member Douglas J.J. Peters (D-Bowie). The two were competing to fill a seat opened by the retirement of state Sen. Leo E. Green (D). Henry said if the petition is refused, he will consider filing a legal challenge.

Votes tallied last week showed Henry trailing Peters by more than 500 votes, about 3.8 percent. But a spokeswoman for Henry said various voting irregularities, including polls opening late and machines malfunctioning, could have affected the outcome.

Robert G. McGinley, the Prince George's Board of Elections attorney, said election workers would spend yesterday and today counting provisional ballots. All other questions, he said, would be examined only after workers finish counting paper ballots.

Staff writers Rosalind S. Helderman and Martin Weil contributed to this report.