Behind the Headlines

So, you live in Scott or Woodford County. You did your civic duty and voted Tuesday. You went to bed wondering who had won the local races in your county or city. You opened your door Wednesday morning, picked up your copy of the Herald-Leader, flipped to the election results lists on pages A16 and A17, found your county and ……. N/A. That’s what you saw for races in Woodford County, Midway, Versailles, Scott County, Georgetown, Sadieville or Stamping Ground. We’ve received a few calls today from inquiring voters in these two counties, and a few others who live in counties for which we had incomplete results in the morning paper. What happened?

In a nutshell, the combination of heavy turnout, long lines, a huge ballot and new electronic voting machines combined to slow down election tallies and results Tuesday night. In some counties, this meant the results just came in a bit later than normal. In other counties, it meant results weren’t fully tabulated by election officials until Wednesday — well after the paper had gone to press. Unfortunately, Woodford and Scott counties — two counties in the Herald-Leader’s core circulation area — had major problems tabulating election returns Tuesday night. In Scott, the problem was related to difficulty combining results from a mix of old and new voting machines. In Woodford, votes were being counted by hand because of problems with voting machines. The results for these counties, and many others, weren’t ready when the first edition of the Herald-Leader hit deadline (around 11 p.m.). Our lists of county and city results were far more complete for the paper’s final edition (which hit deadline around 12:30 a.m.), but Scott and Woodford results still weren’t available by that time.

So, readers in those areas found N/A in the newspaper. We updated a voter turnout story in the paper to report the vote-counting problems in both counties. And, in a story about key races in regional counties, Herald-Leader reporters gave the latest results available for races such as Georgetown mayor.

Five or six years ago, that would have been the end of the story — and results for Woodford and Scott wouldn’t have been available until Thursday’s newspaper. Enter the web. We’ve been updating voting results on Kentucky.com throughout the day today. Many counties that were incomplete in the morning paper now have complete results online, including Scott and Woodford. At the same time, Georgetown bureau reporter Steve Lannen posted a story online about the results in the Georgetown mayor’s race in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

In Thursday’s paper, we will also update and re-publish results from many of the counties that didn’t have results in the two editions of Tuesday’s newspaper. Central Kentucky reporter Greg Kocher also will have a story following on the vote-machine problems in some counties. We strive to include the most complete election results possible the day after the vote. Sometimes circumstances beyond our control make that impossible. With Kentucky.com, we can report those election results as soon as we have them — and you don’t have to wait a full day to find out who won.

Peter Baniak
metro editor