Missing thumb drive delays Elkhart County election results

ELKHART, Ind. -- Election results in Elkhart County were delayed on Election Night after an issue involving a thumb drive left workers manually scanning all votes from a voting site. 

 Jenny Wertenberger, Elkhart County's chief deputy clerk, says a thumb drive collects the results from each voting center.

 "All of our votes are tabulated at each individual vote center. It is gathered on a media device, and that device has to come back – that's what's actually giving us the tabulation," she says.

 But when one voting center misplaced a thumb drive, election officials had to manually scan all votes from that site.  

 "It probably took about three hours to get that vote center done," Wertenberger says.  

 By 2:30 Wednesday morning, all votes had been accounted for, and Elkhart County was reporting 100% of its results. However, the final results were not made available to ABC57 until business hours.  

 Despite the delay, Wertenberger says the county also saw a record number of early votes this year, with 7,000 more votes than in 2022.