Software glitch delays recount in Maloy vs. Jenkins primary

SALT LAKE CITY — A software error led to a manual recount and ultimately the correct result in Utah’s fiercely contested congressional primary.

Incumbent Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, was declared the winner in the Republican primary for the 2nd Congressional District against challenger Colby Jenkins. A total of about 107,000 votes were cast.

According to Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, the candidates were separated by 176 votes. Initially, the difference between the congressional candidates was 214 votes more for Maloy.

One of the delays affecting the primary election outcome occurred in Tooele County, where an error in 55 tallied votes required further scrutiny.

Tooele County Clerk Tracy Shaw said they ran into a bug in the software code during the recount. She said the election vendor walked them through the error. They then applied the changes to the processed votes and the error did not reoccur.

However, Shaw said a recount showed discrepancies.

“And so we went through our rulings to see if we as humans made a mistake during this recount process. But we found no errors.”

If the recount does not match, it’s time for a manual recount

Manual vote counting then began in districts where errors had previously been detected.

“That’s when we reached out to our election materials vendor and the lieutenant governor’s office to help us figure out what was going on, because the official source is obviously the hand count,” Shaw said.

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

“Good job by those two officials for recognizing that something was missing from their numbers. Unfortunately, we found a software error that affected those votes, but it was identified, confirmed, and it did not affect the outcome in any of the other counties. So we have confidence in the outcome of this recount,” Cowley said.

What about the general election?

To prevent the same mistake from happening again in the November general election, Cowley said one recommendation is to indefinitely suspend electronic ballot resolution.

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

He added that until there is 100 percent confidence in the voting results, there will be no progress in maintaining the status quo.

“Until we are absolutely certain this will not happen again, we will not proceed. In the meantime, we will conduct further investigation and research to find out exactly what caused the problem,” Cowley said.

Related: