Anyone who religiously watched the elections results on Utah County's Web site last Tuesday night probably noticed something a little odd in some cities: a city with all precincts reporting their numbers — but with only one or two votes per candidate.

New computerized machines make the voting process more secure and reliable, but sometimes the software makes reported numbers more confusing.

Ballots are reported in three sections by the precincts: in-office voting, regular voting and early voting. When a precinct reports the numbers for the first section, the software and subsequently the online numbers show the precinct has reported. The reporting precincts are for only that chunk of the ballots, said Sandy Hoffman, Utah County elections clerk.

The computers and software also work so that if even one vote from the precinct is received, the software shows it as the entire precinct reporting, said Bryan Thompson, Utah County clerk/auditor.

He said the elections office and information systems technicians were looking at ways to make the numbers less confusing.

The Utah County government has never administered municipal elections, but because of Referendum 1 — the proposed voucher law that was defeated soundly by voters — the counties oversaw the ballots.

Last Tuesday's election was also the first time the new computerized polls were used in a municipal election in Utah.

After the infamous hanging chad controversy during the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002, mandating an up-to-date system that removed paper ballots from the election process.

The state received a list of vendors that offered computerized polling machines, and the county clerks chose the system that is used throughout the state, Thompson said.

Each machine is locked in a secure room at the polling place and before the elections begin, a tape is run through to make sure no votes have been cast on that machine.

A seal strap secured around the machine must be unbroken until the polls open. If a seal is broken, the machine is taken back to the main storage locker and another is used in its place, Thompson said.

The computer records each vote in three places: on a memory card plugged into the machine, an internal memory card and on a paper ballot. When the polling place closes, the memory card of each machine is taken back to the county offices in Provo where the votes are downloaded, counted and reported. "What took four to five hours to calculate is now done in just a couple hours," Thompson said. "Sometimes those (old) cards would jam, but now we download (the votes) from the memory card, and it's checked in."

He said with the new machines people want the results faster, which isn't always possible. Even with the computers, the process is still time-intensive.

The elections office is still counting ballots; about 4,000 provisional ballots were cast on Tuesday, and the office is waiting for about 600 to 700 absentee ballots that haven't arrived, Thompson said.

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E-mail: csmith@desnews.com