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Presidential Elections - AP
Computer May Have Lost 4,500 N.C. Votes 

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - More than 4,500 votes may be lost in one North
Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored
ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Scattered
other problems may change results in local races around the state.

Officials are investigating whether the lost votes in coastal Carteret
County can be retrieved somehow, said state Board of Elections
Executive Director Gary Bartlett.

Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's
electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could
handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.

Expecting the greater capacity, the county used only one unit during
the early voting period. "If we had known, we would have had the units
to handle the votes," said Sue Verdon, secretary of the county
election board.

Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost. 

UniLect, based in Dublin, Calif., did not immediately return a phone
call Thursday seeking comment. County election officials were in a
meeting and did not return a message seeking comment.

Two statewide races remained undecided Thursday, for superintendent of
public instruction, where the two candidates are about 6,700 votes
apart, and agriculture commissioner, where they are only hundreds of
votes apart.

How those two races might be affected by problems in individual
counties was uncertain. At least 72,000 provisional ballots are still
to be counted, with four counties not yet reporting those figures,
Bartlett said.

In Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, a discrepancy was
reported in the number of early votes cast. Before the election, the
county election office said 102,109 people voted early or returned
valid absentee ballots. Unofficial results from election night showed
106,064 of those votes.

Elections director Michael Dickerson said election officials had not
lost any votes and he noted the results were not official yet.

A recount could change results in county commission races. 

Nationwide, only scattered problems were reported in electronic
voting, though roughly 40 million people casting digital ballots,
voting equipment company executives had said.