Votes won't be counted until Friday
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
By JARRETT RENSHAW   The Jersey JOURNAL

It appears that last week's election will not be finalized in Hudson County until at least Friday, says County Clerk Javier Incl?n.

Twenty-two cartridges mistakenly left inside the electronic voting machines - which were sent back to the warehouse for storage - are still outstanding, he said. In order to count those votes, Incl?n needs to get a court order to open the machines and retrieve the cartridges.

He said he'll go to court on Thursday, then get the cartridges and certify the votes the following day. 
 This is not the first problem the county has had with the machines. Fifteen cartridges were left in voting machines during the November 2004 election; they too were eventually obtained through court order and then added to the tally.

Meanwhile, the county received two new digital readers yesterday from Sequoia Systems to replace the pair that broke within 10 minutes of each other on Election Day, leaving about 120 of the county's 450 voting precincts untallied that day.

Election workers manually entered the votes last week, but the new readers were used to double-check the votes - to make sure they work, if nothing else, Incl?n said.