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MAINTANANCE POSITION

Early voting was back on track Saturday after a computer problem resulted in roughly 300 voters being turned away late Friday afternoon.

Many voters had been waiting an hour or more when workers at early voting sites around Pima County announced they could not connect to the main server to verify voter information.

After an IT worker working on another project Friday afternoon rebooted the same server that contains voter information, poll workers could not maintain a connection to the server.

Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez said the IT worker just wasn’t thinking about the possible implications.

“My rule of thumb is never do anything during an election that could affect the election,” she said.

Despite the mistake, Rodriguez said voters “absolutely” can have confidence in the election process. No votes were lost during the shut-down, and no votes could have been lost.

Votes cast on the touchscreen machine are stored within the machine, not on a central server, and votes cast on paper go into a locked box to be verified later. After verification, those ballots are sent to the Elections Division to be counted there.

The Recorder’s Office maintains voter registration rolls, runs early voting and verifies vote-by-mail, early and provisional ballots. The county Division of Elections runs the polls on Election Day and counts the votes.

Despite assurances, some voters said the problems undermined their confidence in the system.

Micha ne Lona, an acupuncturist, had been waiting more than an hour to vote Friday at Sacred Heart Church, 601 E. Fort Lowell Road, because she has patients to see on Tuesday. She was told the server was down and would not be fixed that night.

Combined with the stories of voter problems and long lines in other states and in the last two presidential elections, the incident makes her nervous about the election.

“I just have a personal lack of confidence in this system,” she said, referring to incidents across the country, not necessarily in Pima County. “I look at the blue ballot box and just think ‘Please get where you need to get.’ I hesitate to mail it in, and I hesitate to early vote because I worry it won’t get where it needs to go. But I can’t vote Tuesday.”