“A machine needed to be recounted because the SD cards (like a skip reader that collects votes) were removed and they had to be recounted,” GOP Election Commissioner Joe Suhrada said via text message Wednesday morning. “So that showed we didn’t have any reporting on the districts.”

Suhrada said he worked on the problem until about 2 a.m., when the State Board of Elections informed his office that they could go home and resolve the problem on Wednesday.

“Lost or misplaced,” Surhada said of what happened to the SD card in a follow-up text. “We believe they are here but misplaced, but rest assured, this is just a vote count, so we are re-analyzing the entire collection of ballots that found in the machine under bipartisan oversight.”

Because the issue showed no districts had been reported, candidates, including state Sen. Jim Tedisco, R-Ballston Lake, left the Republican watchdog party at the Adelphi Hotel in Saratoga Springs, believing that no results were being achieved when in fact they were, Suhrada said.

Tedisco’s office said the problem involved a Malta polling station that was also used for early voting.

“Apparently an election worker lost the SD card from the Malta Community Center early voting site and therefore has to manually scan around 2,500 votes, which is a tedious process,” said Tedisco spokesperson Adam Kramer. “As this is an early voting site, votes can come from anywhere in the county, which is why no precincts are listed on the website.”

Although Kramer said not all votes were counted, that should not affect Tedisco’s re-election results in the 44th Senate District, in light of his good margin, based on what the camp of Tedisco saw incomplete electoral results.

Tedisco received 88,447 votes between the Republican Party and Conservative Party lines, while opposing Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi received 63,378 votes between the Democratic Party and Working Family Party lines .

Over the years, Saratoga County election officials have been among the slowest in the region to release results on election night, according to longtime election observers.

“It’s getting more and more complex,” Suhrada said. “This is probably why it takes us so long to verify the results in 204 districts and 84 polling stations. Some inspectors who work one or two days a year make simple human errors.

Suhrada went on to say that there are built-in safeguards, such as simply re-scanning ballots.

Before voting began in Saratoga County on Tuesday, election officials had to resolve a problem with voting machines in Northumberland because supply bags containing the key to the voting machines had been swapped, according to Suhrada. This issue was resolved before the site opened. However, voters in the town of Ballston’s Third Precinct had to wait about 40 minutes later than opening time on Election Day because poll workers there did not have a key to the machine.

Suhrada said that’s why people need to be trained on the machines to really get familiar with them, but he also deals with new poll workers every year.

“We can overcome this problem, but familiarity with a tool is good practice,” he said. “And don’t forget that these machines have been in use for 15 years!” So people should know about them, but what I mean is that we also have constantly evolving human resources.

The county will now move from its current federal voting systems to clear vote systems, which are expected to be used for the first time in a special election in Saratoga Springs in January to elect a public works commissioner to fill the unfilled term. expired from Jason Golub, who resigned. to take a job in the state in August.

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