By By ANDY HAMILTON / Niles Daily Star
ST. JOSEPH – Election results for Berrien County took a little longer then expected Tuesday night.
Berrien County Clerk Louise Stine said computer software used by the county failed and she, along with about six other people, were up until 5 a.m. manually counting votes.
"The tabulators worked just fine," Stine said of the optical scan machines that read the ballots. "The machines are fine … it's the software."
She added every tabulator in every precinct has a memory pack that totals votes. The memory packs were brought back to the county clerk's office and uploaded to generate a countywide vote total. But, the software that was supposed to perform the task malfunctioned, she said.
"Finally, at 2 a.m. we were told by Sequoia Voting Systems the software … was not going to work," Stine said.
As a result, Stine said votes were manually counted using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program. Each vote total – from all candidate races and proposals from all 71 precincts in Berrien County – was added with the spreadsheet, she said.
"And we had to do that for every candidate on the ballot," Stine added.
Stine said Tuesday's primary was the first election using the software. She also said Workers from Sequoia are supposed to come to St. Joseph and correct the software.
"It will run correctly in November," Stine said.
As a result of the improvised format, The Daily Star was given inaccurate results from the county clerk's office on the Lake Michigan College millage renewal.
In Berrien County, 7,536 people supported the renewal and 6,736 opposed. Voters living in municipalities in the county provided 1,647 yes votes and 874 no votes. Voters residing in the county's townships submitted 5,889 yes votes and 4,023 no votes.