Problems Counting Votes - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Problems Counting Votes

While most election results were available by about 11 last night, Ward County workers had to work well into early Wednesday morning to finish up their counting.

There were just four voting locations for residents of Minot - meaning a huge number of votes to be handled at each of the four locations.
At MAYSA Arena, the task of balancing out the paperwork related to the voting took several hours - meaning more than a quarter of the city's votes were not available for counting until after Midnight.
And the huge crush of people voting compounded the problem.
Over 13,000 Ward County Residents came out to vote.
While the four locations are already locked in for the November election, Ward County Auditor Devra Smestad says changes will be made at the locations to improve the voting process.

(Devra Smestad, Ward County Auditor)"Add a couple more workers and a couple more scanners so people have the opportunity to get in and out better ."

The delay in getting the thousands of votes cast at MAYSA counted, meant final results for Ward County and City of Minot issues were delayed until the wee hours of the morning.
Here are the final figures showing the three incumbent school board members being re-elected to four-year terms, and Steven Velk winning the race to finish two years of an unexpired term.
In Ward Four, Amy Moen was elected.
In Ward Seven, incumbent Kevin Connole was the winner.
And in the Ward County Board race - where all five of these candidates move on to the November general election where three will be elected - Alan Walter, Jack Nybakken, and Shelly Weppler were the top three vote-getters.  Again, all five names will appear on the November ballot.