ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. – Voters in St. Charles County are seeking answers on why the county election website wasn’t updating with results during Tuesday’s primary election.
“This is a major disfunction. You’re having a party for people who are here for an election and they have zero results. It’s almost 10 o’clock. It’s unheard of,” Councilman Joe Brazil said during Bill Eigel’s watch party Tuesday.
According to Brazil, election results used to be posted directly to the website as a PDF. That changed in 2019 when the county election website switched to using a vendor.
“The reason we use the vendor is just because they have created the software to do this in a very easy method, and a very visually appealing way for voters. By having multiple ways of seeing that data, it allows people to digest it in a way that is comfortable for them. The election authority doesn’t have an IT staff to be able to do that type of programming,” St. Charles County Director of Elections Kurt Bahr said.
There was never an issue with the website until Tuesday’s primary, Bahr noted.
“We knew immediately as soon as we tried to upload the information about the absentee ballots, which was about 7:30 p.m., 7:45 p.m.,” he said.
Each time he uploaded a new batch of votes, the website still showed zero percent. While he worked with the website’s vendor, 12 election workers continued tabulating votes.
“It’s frustrating because we want to give that information to the voters as quickly as possible. We work with the voters obviously all day long to help voters cast their vote, but our day isn’t over until we have tallied that vote and given voters the knowledge of who won,” Bahr said.
FOX 2 reached out to the vendor for a comment but has not yet heard back. Bahr is working on a backup plan in case this ever happens again.
“It took us longer than it should have and in hindsight, if this problem ever happens again, those PDFs will go up immediately,” he said.
