As the State Canvassing Board declared DFLer Dan Sparks the winner of the Senate Deistrict 27 election, Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer was explicit about her uneasiness with the 17 missing ballots from Austin’s Ward 2, Precinct 1, calling it &uot;a very irreconcilable situation.&uot; She was also uncomfortable seeing the high number of ballots brought into question, and suggested new measures be implemented for training election judges.

The missing ballots mishap traces back to 10 or 11 p.m. on election night, when the precinct judges brought the vote totals to the County Auditor’s Office, according a report submitted to the board by recount official Bert Black.

Election officials found the votes exceeded the number of voters, the report said, and then Auditor Woody Vereide redirected the judges to City Clerk Lucy Johnson, who had the ballots in her office, to reconcile the numbers.

The election judges believed the counting of absentee ballots caused the discrepancy, since some of them were cast before Sen. Paul Wellstone died, and were not accompanied with a supplemental ballot, which had Walter Mondale’s name instead of Wellstone’s.

Though all ballots had been reviewed, the discrepancy could not be resolved. The difference turned out to be 17. Around 2 a.m. Johnson made a general remark that deducting the Wellstone votes would allow the numbers to match, which one of the election judges interpreted as an instruction to physically remove the ballots. The ballots were later destroyed at the judge’s home.

Eliminating ballots is an apparent violation of counting practice.

&uot;Election judges are specifically told that they will bring back every voted ballot on election night,&uot; said Albert Lea City Clerk Sandi Behrens. &uot;You don’t ever get rid of any (ballots) that are voted. Every voted ballot is kept. You keep all the spoiled ballots, remade ballots, rejected ballots and good voted ballots. And all of them are kept separately by ward, so that we can go back and pull out the ballots and compare the numbers.&uot;

Behrens also questioned how the supplemental ballots caused the discrepancy between the numbers in Austin.

Another question was the number of votes not counted by optical scanners on Election Day.

Grace Schwab and Sparks gained a combined 122 votes in Austin’s six precincts after the recount, while the increase was only 27 in Albert Lea. Precincts in the two cities use the same optical scanner to count votes. And, the difference in the number of registered voters number does not explain it, either.

&uot;I think we have to look a little closer in light of, if we have another recount, what things the State Canvassing Board and recount team will look at,&uot; said Freeborn County Auditor Dennis Distad. &uot;We just need to focus little more on some of the details.&uot;

Distad said the recount has proven optical scanners function very accurately unless votes are marked improperly. And a part of a possible change in the training program for election judges would be focusing on marking instruction for voters.

The instructions, called &uot;demonstration&uot; in election law, is mandatory. In precincts using optical-scan voting system, one election judge must be designated as the demonstration judge, showing voters how to properly mark ballots. The law stipulates minimum requirements for the instructions and gives each electoral jurisdiction discretion to implement further assistance, including posting sample ballots, as long as the judges remain impartial and are perceived as being impartial.

An incorrectly marked ballot will not be counted by a machine, but may later be noted during a hand count and added to the total.

Behrens agrees that better demonstration would make a lot of difference to reduce mistakes. &uot;A hand count should make a difference. It shouldn’t make whole a lot of difference, but it will make some difference, depending a lot on the demonstration.&uot;