How a software glitch delayed Maloy vs. Jenkins vote recount

SALT LAKE CITY — A software error led to a hand recount and ultimately the correct vote tally in an extremely tight congressional primary race in Utah.

The incumbent, Rep. Celeste Maloy R-Utah, is now the declared the winner in the Republican primary race for the 2nd Congressional District against challenger Colby Jenkins. In all,  about 107,000 votes were cast.

According to Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, 176 votes separated the two candidates.  Initially, the difference separating the congressional hopefuls was 214 more votes for Maloy.

One of the delays affecting the the primary race outcome came from Tooele County where an error on 55 adjudicated ballots needed further oversight.

Tooele County Clerk Tracy Shaw said that during the recount, they encountered a software code error. She said the election vendor walked them through the error. Next they applied the changes to the adjudicated ballots and the error didn’t occur again.

But Shaw said when they conducted the recount again, discrepancies were found.

“And so we reviewed our adjudications to see if maybe we as humans have made a mistake during that recount process. But we found zero mistakes.”

When the vote recount doesn’t match, it’s hand count time

At that point, a hand count was initiated for precincts where errors were previously discovered.

“That’s when we reached out to our election vendor and to the Lieutenant Governor’s office to get some assistance to figure out what was going on because a hand count is obviously the official source,” Shaw said.

Director of Utah Elections Ryan Cowley said the Tooele County clerk and the Washington County clerk, Ryan Sullivan, did the right thing. After spotting the same software error, they investigated and resolved it quickly.

“Good job by those two clerks to recognize that there was something missing in their numbers. Unfortunately, we did find a software error that did affect these ballots but it was identified, it was verified that it did not affect the outcome in any of the other counties. So we do have confidence in the outcome of this recount,” Cowley said.

What about the General Election?

Ensuring the same mistake doe not happen in the General Election in November, Cowley said one of the recommendations is to suspend indefinitely electronic adjudication of votes.

“We do have a report that’s available on lieutenant governor’s website” concerning the Maloy-Jenkins primary race, he said.

He added until 100% confidence is assured in the tabulation of votes, there will be no moving forward with the status quo.

“Until or unless we have absolute confidence that this won’t occur again in the general, we will not proceed. In the meantime, we’re going to do some further investigation and research into exactly what caused the problem,” Cowley said.

Related:

• With the recount complete, Rep. Celeste Maloy wins 2nd District Republican primary
• Rep. Celeste Maloy talks Republican National Convention, primary election recount