Voting glitch fixed early in Rockville

Officials say problem had no significant impact on election

Election officials said the glitch had no significant impact on the election.

The error was spotted soon after polls opened at 7 a.m. when election judges throughout the city noticed voters whose street addresses start with the number 5 were being denied their voter cards because the database wrongly counted them as absentee voters.

No one was denied a vote, Funkhouser said, but some of the first voters were inconvenienced while City Hall moved to implement a temporary fix.

Some voters were delayed in casting their ballots or asked to go to City Hall to remedy the problem.

The solution was in place citywide by 7:45 a.m., Funkhouser added, enabling election judges to provide the inconvenienced voters with manually generated voter cards, enabling them to vote.

‘‘Whole blocks of voters were affected,” she said Tuesday morning. ‘‘It’s a large number of voters. It’s across the city. Every polling place is affected.”

The bad information is the result of human error at the Maryland State Board of Elections.

A test copy of a voter database was accidentally shipped to Rockville for use, Ross Goldstein, deputy administrator for the State Board of Elections, said.

The database in use is up to date and accurate, he said, except for the absentee glitch. Those whose street numbers start with the number 5 were designated absentee ballot applicants as part of a state test program that should not have been forwarded for Election Day use.

‘‘Something got overlooked here,” Goldstein said. ‘‘And we’ll continue to review our process to see how that could happen.”

Todd Travis experienced the trouble firsthand.

Trying to get to work early, the longtime Rockville resident hit his Lincoln Park polling place shortly after 7 a.m. When he gave his name to the judge, Travis was told he had already filed for an absentee ballot, which was not the case, he said.

Travis was sent to City Hall, where officials confirmed he was not on the absentee list. He was told to return to the polling center, but refused until the trouble was sorted out. A city employee solved his dilemma, taking his vote via a same-day absentee ballot.

Funkhouser said some voters impacted by the problem trickled into City Hall and voted using absentee ballots before the fix was implemented. But others, pressed for time, simply did not vote.

Travis said the problem might taint the election for a packed field of 14 candidates.

‘‘If I was a candidate, I’d be concerned about how this is working out,” Travis said.

Mayor Larry Giammo, who called for a paper-based voting system in May, agreed.

‘‘We were relying on the State Board of Elections to give us poll books that work with uncorrupted data, otherwise they’re putting the integrity of our election at risk,” he said.

City election officials kept written lists of voters affected by the glitch to assure against duplicate voting.