The Dubuque County Auditor's Office will spend Tuesday through Thursday of this week recounting more than 4,200 ballots after learning of an error possibly affecting 19 ballots in last week's primary election.

County supervisors this morning approved the recount of 15 of the county's 34 precincts. 

The affected precincts are precincts 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 22, 23, 26, 32 and 34.

According to County Auditor Kevin Dragotto, the error that occurred with the 19 ballots — spread across the 15 precincts — equated to a paper jam.

"The ballot was put in. We believe the person held on to it too long," he told the Telegraph Herald. "So, when the scanner was trying to suck it in, it recorded the vote and reported it as a jam and spat it back out. The person would put it back, and (the machine could have) theoretically recorded that twice."

Dragotto said the error also happened in other counties that used the same Unisyn paper ballot election machines, according to information shared in a statewide call with the Iowa Secretary of State's Office.

"After we had some reports on Election Day of, ‘Hey, we have some ballots that may have jammed,’ we don’t think much of it (and) think it is a one-off," Dragotto said. "But as the other counties reported in, we had a meeting with the Secretary of State (staff). This was their recommendation."

Secretary of State Communications Specialist Jacob Holck confirmed the recommendation to Dubuque County and told the TH that this kind of issue with paper ballot voting is not particularly uncommon.

"While paper jams are not so common that they occur in every election, they aren’t wholly uncommon either," he said in an email. "When we have a statewide election, it is not unusual for one or more counties to report experiencing paper jams."

Dubuque County staff will conduct an administrative recount for each of the 15 precincts, using each precinct's machine. During that, they will re-enter 4,271 ballots.

"Because (county elections staff) will be running them through with a Democrat and a Republican team observing, we will know that we don’t have any jams, that everything went in as it should," Dragotto said. "At the end of the day, this is the system working, and results are not going to be changed. We’re not even sure those 19 are going to come back as having been counted twice."

Among county-level races, there were only two contested contests on ballots last Tuesday in Dubuque County, and in each case, the winners garnered thousands more votes than their competitors. And there were no other races on any Dubuque County ballots -- for state or federal seats -- in which the margin of victory was not hundreds of votes or more. 

Holck agreed that these recounts display the checks and balances in place to ensure election integrity in Iowa.

"Those measures are put in place for this exact reason, so that when a discrepancy exists, we can ensure voters that their vote was cast and properly counted," he said.

Reached by the TH today, auditor office staffs in Clayton, Delaware, Jackson and Jones counties all reported using different types of voting machines than Dubuque County and having had no issues in last week's election.

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this is why people get upset about voting results. This seems like the ideal time to change election results.

No, people get upset about voting because their candidate gets beat. I'm disappointed, not upset, because one of my candidates got beat. Not because there was a paper jam in my precinct. I know that the hard working election officials in the end will get it tallied correctly.

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