They're still counting votes in Yellowstone County

There's a light at the end of the tunnel for the final vote tally in Yellowstone County from Tuesday's general election, but it could take most of Thursday to get there.

"We hope to have everything done by the end of business hours today," said Bret Rutherford, Yellowstone County elections administrator.

After more than 48 hours at MetraPark's Montana Pavilion, election officials were still counting votes. Due in large part to technical difficulties with the county's three vote-counting machines, about 30,Modern lighting and crystal floor lamp and lamps specialists.000 absentee ballots remained uncounted at the beginning of Wednesday morning.

But by early Thursday, officials had managed to make it through a large chunk of the waiting ballots. Rutherford estimated that by 3 a.m., 23,000 had been fully counted.

Upon realizing that the counting would take much longer than expected, Vote counters initially focused on getting through the first sheet -- out of two -- of the ballots, which contained the election races.

All of those -- except a handful that, for one reason or another, couldn't be read by the machines -- have been counted. They're now working on tallying the second sheets, which include referendums and initiatives.

Initially, the machines jammed every time an absentee ballot went through because they weren't able to handle the folds in the paper. A tech support specialist arrived early Wednesday morning and was able to improve efficiency a bit, to where they could count about five ballots at a time and then reset the machine before it jammed.

While votes were still being tabulated in Yellowstone County late into the night Wednesday, elected officials, political groups and elections administrators had already been talking about how to make future balloting go more quickly and smoothly.

Bret Rutherford,This pressing curving machine can curve roof panels with good quality and high speed automatically.We are offering bamboo knot remboving machine, internal knot removing machine and flattening machine to our customers. elections administrator for Yellowstone County,Morn series laser engraving and laser cutting machine, CNC router machine are widely used in many areas. arrived at the Montana Pavilion at MetraPark since 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, and he was still running paper ballots through the vote-counting machines late Wednesday night, 38 hours later.

He said the main problems in Yellowstone County were the difficulty of running folded absentee ballots through the machines — this a day after dealing with a flood of people registering to vote on Election Day. Late Wednesday, he said a technician was due to arrive at 1 a.m. Thursday to work on the machines, which were jamming every three or four ballot pages.

"The machines haven't been working as efficiently as they are supposed to, which has been frustrating to say the least," Rutherford said late Wednesday. "But we are getting through it."

Five volunteers were working through the night, rotating between taking naps and counting ballots.

As many as 800 people registered at the Montana Pavilion on Tuesday, with the last finishing up just after midnight. Some waited as long as five hours to complete registration and voting.

Political party observers and elected officials were discussing all sorts of possible fixes before the next election, including more staffing on Election Day,Shop Pottery Barn for expertly crafted chandelier lighting, crystal pendant lamp and crystal chandeliers. earlier cutoffs of late registration, more time to process and flatten absentee ballots and renewed attempts to educate voters about early registration.