When Sen. Jeanette White (D-Windham) read off the Vermont election vote totals during a joint session of the House and Senate on Thursday morning, something didn’t sound right.
Liberty Union candidate Boots Wardinski surely didn’t get 69,000 votes, thought Rep. Kurt Wright (R-Burlington) as he heard the number.
Indeed, Wardinski tallied just 7,038 votes — but legislators had come within a whisker of certifying the wrong numbers.
“It’s actually pretty serious,” Wright said as the legislature’s canvassing committee reconvened to figure out what went wrong.
What went wrong was that the Secretary of State’s Office inadvertently sent over incorrect numbers, Secretary of State Jim Condos conceded.
“I’m embarrassed about this,” Condos told the canvassing committee.
Such an error would have kept lieutenant governor-elect David Zuckerman under 50 percent of the vote, which would have sent the election to the legislature for another vote.
Deputy Secretary of State Chris Winters said certifying the incorrect numbers could have opened the state to a legal challenge about the election.
As the canvassing committee awaited corrected numbers, jokes flew. “Maybe we can blame the Russians,” Winters quipped.
“There have been some chuckles on this,” White told the canvassing committee. “But Kurt is absolutely right. This is really, really serious.”
While the Secretary of State’s Office provided the wrong numbers, the canvassing committee on Wednesday went along with them. It was only when the numbers were read aloud on the House floor Thursday that the error was noticed.
The joint House and Senate finished certifying the correct numbers just in time for the Senate to swear in Zuckerman. He really did win more than 50 percent of the vote, they determined, allowing him to officially take office.
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I want to make sure everyone knows the results of the election were never in question. We take election integrity seriously, despite my attempt to lighten the mood while we waited with a joke.
The results were correct on election day and were correct when certified by the parties on November 15th. There was a transcription error in taking the results from our system and putting them on the the document for the Legislature.
We take full responsibility for this error on the document and sincerely apologize. We have already taken steps to make sure that this mistake never happens again.
Riiiiight…..check’s in the mail!
The lack of accuracy and accountability that allowed this mishandling of the vote is yet another example of the disdain officials have for their fellow citizens. Such an important matter, must by no means, be left uncorrected and the cause corrected so that there cannot be another of this type of error. It appears, from this article, that the Government has just swept this under the table. Not necessarily as a cover up but as unimportant. This is incorrect. Every error must be totally examined, to the point of, ridiculousness to ensure that Government is as representative as possible.