todd.jackson@roanoke.com 981-3253

The mystery of Alice Hincker's missing Grandin Court mayoral vote was solved with a toothbrush and a can of silicone spray Monday morning.

After waiting the required 30 days following the May 4 Roanoke City Council election, city officials inspected the Grandin precinct's mechanical voting machine and determined that it was a jammed part that prevented any votes for Hincker to be recorded.

Corbin Beach, who works on the old machines for the city to keep them running, tinkered with the Grandin one - officially known as No.83420 - turning a screwdriver here and there, and actually trying to cast a vote for Hincker, the Republican candidate on last month's ballot. The machine wouldn't let him. So Beach grabbed a toothbrush and rubbed it over rolling parts on the machine that record candidate votes. All of them turned freely except the one that was set to record Hincker's vote.

"It's just stuck," said Beach, adding that he's never dealt with such a problem in his 11 years on the job. A few minutes later, after blasting the jammed part with a shot of silicone, it started to work again.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it's a mechanical failure," announced city Electoral Board member Carl Tinsley, who was observing. Tinsley and other election officials were relieved that the cause of the Grandin problem was found, so it will hopefully douse any rumors of vote tampering.

Election officials also know they dodged a major mess because the Grandin Court discrepancy fortunately did not involve enough votes to change the outcome of the mayoral election, won by Democrat Nelson Harris.

But Monday's machine inspection in the corner of a garage on Salem Avenue still turned into a debate between Hincker and election officials over the integrity of the city's overall voting process.

Hincker, on hand to witness the proceedings, said that she was comfortable with Monday's findings, but she questioned why the city doesn't thoroughly inspect all of its machines after elections to make sure they worked properly.

She peppered election officials with questions and said she believes that people could conspire to fix an election in the city under its current system - clearly proved fallible by the Grandin Court situation. Hincker pointed out that attention was paid to her Grandin Court total because she got zero votes, which would have been unprecedented for a major party candidate. After that total was reported publicly the day after the election, eight Grandin Court voters called The Roanoke Times to say they voted for Hincker. The first-time candidate said she later heard from a number of others.

Hincker said it's likely that no one would have paid any attention to her Grandin total if the machine would have recorded any number of votes for her other than zero, whether that total was accurate or not. She wonders how many times in the past the mechanical machines have failed and locked up on certain numbers other than zero, making other election totals inaccurate.

City election officials readily acknowledged that any system that involves machines and people can't be perfect, but Registrar Beryl Brooks said the city does have the proper checks and balances in place to adequately protect the integrity of its election process. Brooks said that all of the city's machines are checked before an election to make sure they're working, and election officials also have caught a number of human errors in the past after elections.

Joanne Jones said this year's Grandin Court problem was unfortunate, but she said it shows that the mechanical machines used for close to 70 years do wear out. The city is buying new electronic touch-screen voting machines that it plans to use in the November presidential election.

There's an ongoing national debate over the pros and cons of the electronic machines, too, but Brooks and Jones said the Grandin Court problem prompted by a mechanical machine is a good sign that it's time the city moved to computer voting.