POLLING STATIONS: Snags stall results in El Paso County

Elections results in El Paso County stalled last night as a communications mishap slowed returns from four polling stations.

Officials released the first batch of unofficial results at 9:30 p.m., about two and one-half hours after the polls closed. Waiting on results from four of the 102 polling stations slowed the overall count by about an hour, said County Clerk Bob Balink.

Still, Balink said the first unofficial batch of results rolled out at about the same time as they did in the last election.

“We don’t hurry anything. We take our time and do it right,” he said. “We’re not trying to make a news cycle. We’re just trying to get it right.”

The four stations with late results included a community center in Falcon and three churches, Balink said.

“They were supposed to call us,” he said earlier in the evening. “We called them and they haven’t called us.”

At Centennial Hall in downtown Colorado Springs, about 50 people were lined up shortly before the polls closed at 7 p.m.

Balink said counting votes also slowed when the state’s central voter registration database shut down at 7 p.m. That forced El Paso County election workers to scramble to find other ways to verify the status of those voters.

Those who remained were determined and glad to vote.

“I couldn’t get off work,” said Wendy Miller, who tried to vote early in the morning but was deterred by long lines. When she couldn’t get her lunch hour off, she decided to try again right before the polls closed. That made her one of the last voters to cast a ballot.

She was grateful her vote would count.

A significant number of voters turned to casting their ballots by mail or at early voting stations.

Balink said 44,473 voters cast their ballots on Tuesday. That’s less than half as many as the 97,944 who went to the polls in 2006.

By contrast, the number of mail-in ballots was more than double what it was four years ago. Balink said he expected to have at least 120,000 mail-in ballots, up from 56,606 in 2006.