APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – More information is being released following technical problems in Outagamie County during Tuesday night’s election.
Municipal clerks were unable to report their results to the county officers over the internet, which made results unavailable on the county’s website for much of the night.
Modems were working in individual municipalities, but technical problems at the county office prevented the results from arriving there, according to an email from County Clerk Lori O’Bright to municipal clerks.
Adding to the surprise, the day prior, on Monday, the systems passed a test.
“We first attempted to reboot the system remotely from our office and then we got IT in here to give us access to server room,” says Outagamie County Clerk, Lori O’Bright.
The county clerk’s office went to plan B after both attempts failed.
“Our requirement by law is we get terms posted up within 2 hours of receipt,” says O’Bright.
Fax or email pictures of voting machine tapes were being sent by municipalities to the county.
“We physically brought all of our election data sticks to the Outagamie County Clerk’s office so they could upload results directly,” says the Appleton City Clerk in an email.
“At that point, the only difference between Outagamie County and others is how the data came in, and it came in the old fashion way,” explains Outagamie County Executive, Tom Nelson.
“There certainly can be human error especially when we do data entry physically versus machine talking to server, so that will all be corrected in canvass,” says O’Bright.
The server issue had an effect on the way they had to be counted, but not on anybody’s vote or ballot.
Official results will be verified next week when the Board of Canvass will look at the physical tapes.
According to an email by O’Bright, here is a list of steps the county took:
- Reboot of the server was attempted from the County Clerk’s office. This attempt did not bring the server back up.
- IT was contacted and arrived later to provide access to the server room.
- Once IT staff arrived, an attempt was made to reboot the server from the server room.
- During 2 & 3, clerks/election inspectors who called were requested to hold off modem and attempt to re-modem in 20 minutes.a. An email was sent to municipal clerks.b. The website was updated regarding the IT issue we were experiencing and that precinct results would be posted as quickly as we were able.
- When it was determined the server was not going to operator, we requested municipal clerks provide unofficial returns in a backup method.
- The County Clerk posted those backup as they were received and staff was able to do so. The unofficial returns were provided either by faxes of copies of the tally tapes, emails of pictures of the tally tapes, or call in of returns (very slow for us to receive returns in that method especially since County Clerks have been more recently required to post unofficial municipal and school race/referendum results).
- City of Appleton drove in their drives for us to download via the thumb drives.
- Once staff was able, we went back into the Election Management System (EMS) – Election Reporting Management (ERM) and manually entered in the returns. Some returns, because they were tapes, had to be added by staff if there were multiple machines utilized.
- At approximately 10 p.m., our office made an attempt to contact the WI Elections Commission to inform them of the issues we were addressing. Later, WEC Meagan Wolfe contacted our office and reported they were aware of our situation and that they were available for any support needed to us.
- The website was updated with the manual data entry ERM and the precinct reports were taken down so as not to confuse the public/media regarding unofficial results and the numerous postings.
