by Carol Thompson

Members of the Oswego County Legislature want answers as to what went wrong with the Nov. 3 General Election and they are hoping to get those answers when the Community and Consumer Affairs Committee meets this afternoon.

“We are going to discuss the snafus with this election,” Legislature Chairman Barry Leemann said Monday. “All of the legislators are concerned and we don’t want this happening again.”

Voter privacy was one of the problems reported throughout the general election as new machines were used by many for the first time.

Residents filled out a paper ballot that was handed to an election inspector who placed it in the machine that records the votes. Several residents complained that they were given no privacy when filling out the paper ballot.

Some of the booths used for that purpose were side by side facing in one direction rather than being placed in alternate directions and that led to complaints, some legislators said.

Other legislators said they heard complaints in regard to the need to hand their ballot to an inspector to be placed into the machine.

Although voters could place the ballot in a folder, the votes were exposed to the inspector while being passed through the machine, they claim.

The greatest problem that legislators are dealing with is how the unofficial vote tallies were skewed.

In a letter to supporters last week, Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate for the 23rd congressional district, hints that the election might have been stolen from him. Because of that, Hoffman said he is revoking his statement of concession.

Hoffman said he felt he was forced to concede after receiving two pieces of “grim news”—down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night and barely winning his stronghold in Oswego County.

A re-canvassing in the 11-county district shows Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026. In Oswego County, Hoffman was reported to lead by only 500 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted election night, but inspectors found that he actually won by 1,748 votes.

Leemann said the legislature would like to know how that happened. It wasn’t the only race to have a change in the numbers reported on election night.

Some legislators, even those running unopposed, found their numbers had changed once the errors were corrected.

The new optical voting machines were supposed to be a vast improvement over the older lever machines.

Majority Leader Shawn Doyle compared this election to the elections of a third-world country.

“We spend millions of dollars, (Oswego County Board of Elections Commissioner) Bill Scriber is the president of the state commissioners, and we can’t do anything better than Afghanistan’s (election),” he exclaimed.

Leemann said the discussion could prove to be lengthy and he added that he expects the two commissioners will be present at the meeting to explain what went wrong and how they can assure it will never happen again.

Non-committee members are expected to be in attendance. Today’s meeting will conclude this year’s meetings for the legislature committee. The standing committees, with the exception of Finance and Personnel, do not meet in December.