County treasurer race still unsettled

By John Crane

Published: November 7, 2008

Pittsylvania County’s registrar says no one was denied their right to vote Tuesday amid allegations of machine irregularities that left some unable to cast their ballot for treasurer.

Voters who noticed and were concerned enough to alert precinct officials ended up casting paper ballots, Jenny Lee Sanders, the county’s registrar, said Friday.

“I don’t think anyone was disenfranchised,” she said.

Treasurer candidate Kate Berger, who has yet to concede the race to unofficial top vote-getter Teresa Easley, has sent letters to the State Board of Elections and the county asking for an investigation into the matter.

The unofficial results are 12,771 votes for Easley, 11,357 for Berger and 4,232 ballots cast for Chad Miller.

Sanders said she doesn’t know what caused the machine malfunctions at precincts in the county. The program on the machines was identical to the one voters cast their early absentee ballots on at the registrar’s office, which experienced no problems, she said.

“I have no explanation as to why the program didn’t stay the same (at the polls),” Sanders said.

The county Electoral Board will discuss the matter Thursday, she said.

The touch-screen Patriot machines were made by Danville, Calif.-based UniLect.

Nancy Rodrigues, secretary of the Board of Elections, said Wednesday that the machines are thoroughly and repeatedly tested for alignment, accuracy and quality assurance before they’re sent to localities. The testing includes running blank and full ballots through the system, Rodrigues said. 

The problem stemmed from mismatched numbers that were supposed to correspond to each of the three types of ballots — one for president only, another for all federal candidates and a final, full ballot including federal and local candidates, Sanders said.

An election official would press a number and one of the three ballots would appear on the screen. Officials thought they were uploading full ballots when federal or president-only options were presented on monitors.

David Law, precinct chief at the Sycamore-Motley polling place, said 76 people cast ballots before a voter notified him of a problem there at 6:35 a.m. Law had tried to re-send full-ballot screens to machines to correct the matter, but didn’t know he was working with mismatched numbers.

He called the registrar’s office and was able to fix the irregularity at 6:40 after being told to re-label the ballots, he said. Five of the 76 voters returned later and voted by paper ballot for treasurer.

Law said the situation was a careless mistake that “should not have happened.”

“There has got to be a better system to prevent this from happening,” he said.

One voter said there was a malfunction at Renan’s precinct. Bobby Shelton, who lives north of Renan, said he and about five people in line ahead of him voted at about 6 a.m. without a treasurer option. He said his brother-in-law, who was behind him, spotted the irregularity and notified an official.

“I don’t know how many voted before they fixed it,” Shelton said. He said he returned later and voted for treasurer by paper ballot.

Shelton called Staunton River Supervisor Marshall Ecker about the problem. Ecker said he has filed a complaint with the State Board of Elections office in Richmond, and it will be forwarded to the county registrar’s office.

Easley has said she would still win the election even if two-thirds of lost votes went to Berger, but said her opponent has the right to challenge the ballots.

“She has every right to do what she feels like she has to do,” Easley said Friday, declining to comment further.

Contact John R. Crane at or (434) 791-7987.