A bipartisan password

Amy Saunders reports from Butler County:

Vote-counting in Butler County will be bipartisan down to the last click.

After scanning nearly 15,000 absentee ballots Monday night, Board of Elections officials issued a new password to the computer server. Republicans made up the first half of the password and Democrats created the rest.

The password will ensure that no one sees the results before the polls close, said Betty McGary, the board’s deputy director.

“Even I could not preview those results if I wanted to,” McGary said. “When we upload (the results) and push them out on the Web site after the polls close, the public will actually view those results at the same time we do.”

McGary expected the results to be posted by 8 p.m. tonight.

The board’s poll workers and troubleshooters haven’t run into major problems with anything—not even the weather, McGary said.

“We’ve been really quite amazed at how busy the voting has been on such a rainy morning,” McGary said.

Poll workers have noticed that it’s taking some voters 15 to 20 minutes to complete their ballots due to the learning curve that comes with new electronic voting machines and the complexity of ballot language.

“If a voter comes in to vote and isn’t familiar with (the statewide ballot initiatives), it does take quite a bit of time to read and just get through those issues,” McGary said.