| Clay County officials said the problems with 41 missing ballots following their primary election is a problem with the Optical Scanning machine used to audit paper ballots.
A hand count of Precinct 37 took place Tuesday in Clay because of a contested race between Calhoun's Ron Blankenship and Clay's David Walker for the 33rd Delegate District. It is Walker's home precinct.
Walker gained an additional 35 early-ballot votes during Tuesday's recount. He had been ahead of Blankenship by 12 votes.
Clay Commissioner Fran King said "The ballots (41) went through the machine but they did not count," which caused Calhoun County Clerk Richard Kirby to request the ballots be put through the Optical Scanning counter again.
"I thought it would help shed some light on possible problems," Kirby said.
County Clerk Connie Workman and members of the Clay Commission declined, with Commissioner Jerry Linkenogger saying "You'll have to debate the logistics somewhere else."
The Upshur County Commission has now tossed out all Election Day optical scan ballot results and recounted them after approximately 430 early voter ballots were double counted on election night.
The county commission found the error when they convened to canvass the election.
County Administrator William Parker said that in the first precinct examined, which happened to be Precinct 4, the number of ballots did not match the number of voters.
The optical scan ballots from early voting were run through and counted, but then the machine was not reset to zero.
The early voting optical scan ballots were counted again.
Almost 1,900 people cast early votes, but only 433 were optical scan, said Parker. Other early voting was done by touch screen.
"On election night, what we should have done was reset the precincts to zero after running the early voting optical scan ballots," Parker said.
The error has now been corrected.
Following Tuesday's tabulating in Clay, candidate Blankenship said "I'm very confused about the process, what went wrong, and the numbers still don't add up."
An official recount of the 33rd District race commences Friday in Clay and Gilmer counties.
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