PARKERSBURG, OHIO - During the hand count of one of Wood County's precincts on Tuesday, officials discovered a problem with the way the election computer's program handled straight party votes in the multiple candidate races of the 10th Delegate District and magistrates.

"We feel, on initial testing, the programming itself was not giving a straight party vote to anything where there was a vote for more than one. We checked both the 10th Delegate District (where three were elected) and magistrate race (where four were elected), which were the multiple candidate races and that appears to be the problem. I apologize we didn't catch this during the testing; we were so busy with early voting, and there are only so many hours in the day," Wood County Clerk Jamie Six told the board Tuesday upon discovering the problem.

Six said the good news is the ability to catch the error shows the system's checks and balances do work. The error was caught while the election results are unofficial. Because of the large vote margins among the four winning magistrate candidates and three winning delegate candidates and their nearest competitors, officials said they don't anticipate the change in the vote count will change the results of the two races.

At about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, the county received new software and began retabulating all ballots in those two races, Six said. By 5:30 p.m., 7,500 early ballots and 10 precincts had been checked, and Six expected the work to be completed by noon today.

There were 5,136 straight Republican ballots and 4,922 straight Democrat tickets cast in the election. J.D. Beane finished with 11,858 votes, John Ellem, 10,929, and Tom Azinger, 10,735. The next highest vote-getter (after election night) was Fred Gillespie, with 9,558, followed by Scott Wilkinson with 4,901. In the magistrate race, Donna Jackson had 17,171 followed by Emily Bradley with 17,146, Brenda Marshall with 16,202 and Joyce Purkey with 14,951. The next closest vote-getter was Joe Kuhl with 13,821.

Voters who marked a straight party ticket then marked any candidate in a different party for magistrate are warned on the ballot, that they must mark all their choices for that office because their straight party ticket vote would not be counted for that office once they have marked someone from the other party.

Six said he was informed by the state election officials that code would allow, if the error cannot be "fixed," the board can take the results from election night as they are now.

But Six said he contacted the software/computer firm, and asked the company to send down a specialized program that would properly count those two races, and those corrected numbers could then be recalculated for the corrected count.

"Does this open it up for a challenge?" asked Commissioner Bob Tebay.

"Anybody can always ask for a recount once you declare the results," Six said.

Also Tuesday, the board prepared the 516 provisional ballots which have been overruled and will be counted. The provisional ballots included ones challenged at the polls on election day, ballots challenged during the early no-fault voting period, emergency ballots cast by those in nursing homes, and some absentee by-mail ballots which were challenged.

Once the hand count is complete, the canvass work is finalized, and new election totals are run, the board can then declare the results. That declaration marks the beginning of the 48-hour period during which candidates can request a recount. At the end of the 48-hour period, election results may be certified.