From Holden:
Just what the hell have we got against pencil and paper?
More than 4,500 votes may be lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Scattered other problems may change results in local races around the state.
Officials are investigating whether the lost votes in coastal Carteret County can be retrieved somehow, said state Board of Elections Executive Director Gary Bartlett.
Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county’s electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.
Expecting the greater capacity, the county used only one unit during the early voting period. “If we had known, we would have had the units to handle the votes,” said Sue Verdon, secretary of the county election board.
Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost.