Where’s Bob and Nancy?

That’s what some voters in the majority of precinct polling places may have asked themselves. Some of the election officials said this morning they thought a glitch in the county’s election software system may have caused county commissioner candidates incumbent Robert Harper and his challenger Nancy Adams names to be left off of nearly two-thirds of the county ballots, but Voters Registration Democratic leader Kathy Kozuszek told the Chesterton Tribune she totally takes the blame for the error.

The commissioners race in Porter County is countywide, but the race was only put on 43 precinct ballots in townships Washington, Center, and Union.

Kozuszek said she should have checked the key she uses to make the ballot to include the commissioners’ races. She said her blunder stemmed from working with the key to include U.S. Representative Pete Visclosky’s name on certain ballots in Washington Township. The code in the key eventually leads to an inconsistency with the commissioner’s race that needs to be manually fixed so that all ballots in Porter County include it, but Kozuszek said she did not see what should have been a “red flag” to her.

She said has formally apologized to Harper over the phone and extends an apology to his opponent Adams.

“I’m not making any excuses, this is solely my fault. I can’t express deeply enough to the parties, to Mr. Harper, to the Republican candidate (Nancy Adams), and to the public how very sorry I am,” said Koszuszek.

She said she corrected the key this morning and will make absolutely certain that errors like this are not made in November’s general election in which the election would need to be run again costing large sums of taxpayer money.

An additional election will not be held because both Harper and Adams ran uncontested in their races.

“Someone must have been looking out for me,” said Kozuszek.

Posted 5/5/2010