JACKSON - Most of votes are in, but it is still a toss-up as to how badly botched the primary election was.
Despite missing names on ballots, voter confusion and machine malfunctions in Mississippi primaries Tuesday, some say it was a fairly smooth election.
Others disagree.
In Washington County, the offices and names of candidates in three contested supervisor races were left off the ballot, said Bob Boyd, the county's Democratic Party elections coordinator.
"We instructed our poll managers in those districts to stop using the machines and use paper ballots. We then printed additional cards to go into those voting machines," Boyd said. The problem had been corrected in all the precincts by 2 p.m., he said.
"While the machines were shut down, people were voting the correct paper ballots, with the exception of a handful of people who voted early in the morning before the problem was discovered," Boyd said.
Claude McInnis, chairman of the Hinds County Democratic Party, said: "It's worse than it has been in 10 years."
At some Clinton precincts in Hinds County, candidates in the House District 56 race, in which Republican challenger Philip Gunn faces incumbent Republican Jep Barbour, were absent from some ballots in their district.
Janice Bradley of Clinton, Gunn's campaign manager, said she encouraged voters to "vote by affidavit, and be confident that they are in District 56. They need to question the ballot."
The redrawing of Mississippi's legislative districts
caused mix-ups because some voters weren't aware they were voting in different races than they had previously. There were about 400 split precincts among the 122 state House districts and 30 among the 52 Senate districts, meaning people who vote in the same precinct were casting ballots in different races. Mississippi has 2,179 precincts.
"There was some confusion with all the sub-precincts. When voters get to the precinct, they're given a ballot with races they didn't expect," said Kim Gallaspy, a spokeswoman for the state Republican Party. "I think all of it has been ironed out now."
Rickey Cole, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said he had heard about "a few snafus here and there." He said the polls opened late in Yazoo County because of malfunctioning lever machines.
Yazoo County Circuit Clerk Susie Bradshaw said eight precincts were down at different times, but all were working by the afternoon.
Roving technicians were charged with keeping touch-screen voting machines operating in Hinds County, said Lavaree Jones, the county's Democratic elections coordinator.
Cards that tell computers at precincts which elections are to be held in that precinct were mixed up at up to four precincts.
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