Tippecanoe County to fix election database problem

TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI) - Few problems were reported on election night. However, one technical glitch resulted in over a thousand voters not having access to a write-in option in Tippecanoe County.

If a voter decided to use the write-in option, a keyboard was supposed to appear on the touch-screen voting machine, but the keyboard did not appear.

Approximately 1,400 absentee votes would not upload to the electronic database. Tippecanoe County Clerk Linda Phillips said she will be working with the election board's vendor to figure out a solution to that problem.

"We're going to be working with our vendor to figure out how to solve that problem. Nothing is lost, we have the totals, the cards were perfect. But, for technical reasons, they just would not upload last night. We're going to be having to figure out how to get those merged into the main database," said Phillips.

Phillips said it's not a problem that needs to be fixed right now, but does need to be fixed before final results are sent to the state later this month.

"The issue that happened, the certification that was issued to us by the state for official write-in candidates omitted the write-in candidate in District 26 on their initial certification. When that error was caught and corrected, it necessitated a change in the database. Every time you change the database, ballots that were printed, and these were primarily early votes, very early on in the process, won't automatically upload. So, we have to figure out how to get that done," said Phillips.

Phillips said the error doesn't change the outcome of the election. It's just a matter of printing the correct report with the right numbers to send to the state, which is required by law.

Final election results will not be certified until Monday, November 15. Military and overseas voters have until Friday, November 12 to get their ballots turned in. Phillips said auditing will begin on Thursday.