Hamilton County's slow count

Hamilton County election workers (from left) Chuck Swafford, Sherry Poland, and Dennis Predmore, and contractor Barbara White with voting machine vendor Hart Intercivic, look over precinct reports at the Hamilton County Board of Elections. (Photo by Carrie Cochran/The Cincinnati Enquirer)

The reason it took so long for the final handful of Hamilton County precincts to be counted Tuesday night (and early Wednesday morning) was that poll workers in some precincts were sending the paper ballots down to the board of elections, but not the digital memory cards from the optical scan machines that recorded vote totals.

As of about 12:40 a.m., all of the Hamilton County precincts were in except one precinct. Ten more precincts had been counted but not reported.

"We've got the paper ballots for all precincts, but we've been waiting for all the cards to come in,'' said elections director John Williams. "It's a new system, and some of the poll workers forgot that we need to have the digital memory cards.''

Williams said the back-up plan was to scan the paper ballots at the board of elections, but Williams said that would not be necessary because the final digital memory card was on its way to the board by 12:45 a.m.