By Candice Ludlow
Memphis, TN – The Shelby County Election Commission certified the August 5th election today. There was no fanfare or disgruntled candidates at the Operations Center.
Late Wednesday afternoon the election commission released its report on their internal investigation into how the Electronic Poll Books ended up with the early voting data from the May election instead of the August election.
Election commissioners Robert Meyers and James Johnson conducted the investigation into the Electronic Poll Book problem. They identified Dennis Boyce, a computer analyst for the commission, as the one who made the mistake. He selected the wrong data file. According to the report, he should have changed the data file to 922. Instead, he left data file 921 from May in the poll books.
The commissioners say 5,390 voters could have been affected, and 1,952 voted using the failsafe ballot. They completed paperwork and then got to vote on the machine. There were 210 provisional ballots cast. Only 136 were valid, the commission says.
They say the EPB's "are only used on election day." They're used to look up voters, determine voting location, print the voter's ballot application and burn a card to use on the voting machines.
On Election Day, voters were turned away from the polls, saying they had already voted. Before noon that day, Chairman Bill Giannini said they identified the problem at the polls and were attempting to fix it by encouraging all voters who are turned away to cast a failsafe or provisional ballot.
Meanwhile, there are several ongoing investigations: Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Secretary of State's office, and the Shelby County Democratic Party. Minerva Johnican and Regina Morrison Newman filed suit in Chancery Court contesting the election. Johnican lost by 4,924 votes and Newman lost by 4,548 votes. Last week, Congressman Steve Cohen asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to look into the August election.