Why it took 5 hours for Framingham's election results to be published online: What we know
FRAMINGHAM - Delays in getting the full election results out to the general public following Framingham's municipal election on Nov. 7 have the city clerk's office looking at better ways to speed up that process, especially with larger elections looming in the coming years.
City Clerk Lisa Ferguson reported her department had the results ready for publication 85 minutes after polls closed. However, the results were not posted on the city's website until several hours later and the full results including precinct and district totals for candidates were not published until mid-day on Wednesday, Nov. 8.
"Unofficial results were printed by me and my staff and handed to both myself and the public information officer, Susan Petroni at 9:20 p.m. Our public information officer had been invited to our office to expedite public reporting of the election results. By 9:25 p.m., candidates in our hallway, as well as calls to candidates in contested races, were notified and provided the results," Ferguson said in a Thursday, Nov. 9, city council meeting.
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Ferguson said Petroni was tasked with posting the results online. The City of Framingham's official Facebook page posted simple result information at 9:23 p.m. Nov. 7, noting the winners of each of the contested city council races. However, the official results were not posted on the city website until well after midnight.
"In the presence of some of my staff, the public information officer stated that she would scan the document that was given to her and post it on the (city) website. As in all elections, there are learning opportunities," Ferguson said. "We understand the results were not posted to the website, nor was the information given to the government channel until later in the evening. Going forward, with additional learning, is that my office will take sole responsibility for ensuring that the results are posted to the website, and given to the government channel, as soon as they are available."
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Petroni issued a statement to the Daily News, saying she does not have full access to the city website to upload the results, and that the site's webmaster is on leave.
“As Public Information Officer my responsibility is to post on social media. The City Clerk handed me paper print outs of the unofficial election results. I posted them to social media within minutes (9:23 p.m. on Facebook). The webmaster is on leave. When he left, he sent an email on November 1 to all city employees including the clerk’s office of how things on the website would be handled," Petroni stated. "Anything that needed to be added to the website was to go through the IT department and not the PIO. I do not have the ability to scan the paper print outs and upload them to the website on election night. I do not have full access to the website.”
Petroni was not available to answer further questions on the subject.
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Ferguson said she hopes her department would be tasked with publishing the election results as soon as possible in the future.
"Going forward, with additional learning, is that my office will take sole responsibility for ensuring that the results are posted to the website, and given to the government channel, as soon as they are available," she said.
Ferguson noted that despite the delay in the results getting published, election day as a whole was a smooth, secure process, and that her team looks forward to sharpening the process for upcoming major elections.
"As many of you know, regardless of election turnout, every election requires the same setup and administration. We have 10 polling locations, over 100 poll workers, 27 precincts, and five sub-precincts, and all of the permitting, police detail, training and extensive other legal and logistical preparations.
How fast are ballots counted?
Ferguson noted this election was the first time the city used a high-speed ballot scanner, which can be used to count early-voting ballots and mail-in ballots.
"On Tuesday, results from the high-speed scanner were available to us at 8:02 p.m., which was a great success since this was the first time we had the opportunity to use the system during a live event," Ferguson said. "However, we did learn that the merging of the high-speed results with our current memory card system from the polls requires several additional steps, which did delay the reporting for approximately 20 minutes. We are currently working with our vendor to shorten these merging steps to expedite public reporting in the future."
Ferguson noted that in the future, the high-speed scanner will only be used during state and federal elections.
"We were very excited to debut the new high-speed scanner implementation, which would be critical for the 2024 elections, given the anticipated high volume of vote by mail," said Ferguson.
This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Framingham election results took 5 hours to post online: What happened
