http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... nate_race/

The Boston Election Department said yesterday that poll workers inadvertently failed to count the write-in votes in eight city precincts in Tuesday's primary, the latest embarrassment for an agency under federal oversight to make sure voters with limited English skills are not improperly coerced and have enough election information.

Late yesterday afternoon, a Suffolk Superior Court judge ordered that all 2,500 -plus ballots from those eight precincts be unsealed and all write-in votes be counted today at City Hall to determine the winner of the state Senate race between incumbent Dianne Wilkerson and challenger Sonia Chang-Díaz.

According to results released by the city without the missing votes, Wilkerson had a 141-vote lead over Chang-Díaz in the Democratic primary in the Second Suffolk District.

City officials blamed clerical mistakes by fatigued precinct wardens who were dealing with a highly unusual race in which none of the four candidates' names appeared on the ballot. Instead, voters had to write in the name and address of their preferred candidate or affix a sticker bearing that information and then mark an oval next to the name .

The write-in and sticker votes had to be hand-counted by poll workers, and those results had to be added to tally sheets. When no votes in the Wilkerson race were on the tally sheets from eight of the district's 73 precincts, officials realized something was wrong.

Secretary of State William F. Galvin, the state's chief election officer, and Geraldine M. Cuddyer, the Election Department's chairwoman, sought the court order for today's count.

``It was human error," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said in an interview yesterday. ``We haven't discovered yet why they didn't count them, because it is more important to get the count complete. We will. They were well trained. They went to training sessions, but somehow they didn't follow procedures."

Councilor John Tobin -- who represents Jamaica Plain, one neighborhood in the district -- said the mistake seemed ``ludicrous."

``How do you forget to get those totals in?" he asked. ``It's basic. You get the numbers, and you report them. That's stunning."

The mistake was another black eye for the Election Department. In 2003, Galvin's office said there were numerous violations of election regulations in the September preliminary election. In July 2005, the Justice Department sued the agency, alleging the city improperly influenced and coerced Hispanic and Asian-American voters who have limited English skills. City officials settled with the Justice Department, agreeing to federal oversight of elections through 2008 and to provide more training for poll workers and to make available election material in more languages.

Menino said that except for wardens in the eight precincts, 1,200 poll workers did a good job. ``The department is working very well," he said. ``In the last two elections we haven't had any problems."

``This was a very unusual election," the mayor added.

While no write-in votes were counted on the ballots in the eight precincts, state and city officials said the Wilkerson race would probably be the only one affected because it is so close and because there weren't significant write-in candidates for other offices.

``It's our own little Florida," said Chang-Díaz, a 28-year-old former teacher, referring to the 2000 presidential election.

Even before the disclosure of the uncounted votes, Chang-Díaz had been considering asking for a recount.

With a margin of less than a half-percentage point, she would have until tomorrow to collect signatures from 75 voters in the district demanding a districtwide recount. With a larger margin, she would have to seek a recount ward by ward and would have to get 50 signatures by Monday from voters in each of the district's 10 wards she wanted to challenge.

Without complete results, it would be impossible for any candidate to make a decision whether the margin was close enough to seek a recount, Peter Sacks, the assistant attorney general representing Galvin's office, told Suffolk Superior Court Judge Mitchell J. Sikora Jr. yesterday.

``The sooner we know what the initial results are, the more informed the candidates will be," Sacks said in court.

Wilkerson declared victory late Tuesday, and she remained upbeat yesterday afternoon as she sat in the office of her campaign headquarters, fielding calls from supporters.

``I won," she said. ``And after the checking and the double-checking is done, I'm confident that I will still be the winner."

The failure to count all the ballots was the latest twist in a race that confounded voters and left Wilkerson more vulnerable than she has ever been. After she failed to get the 300 signatures needed to put her name on the ballot, she was forced to run a sticker or write-in campaign.

That disadvantage for the seven-term senator encouraged challenges from Chang-Díaz; Democrat John Kelleher, 62, a former state legislator and a Boston police detective; and Samiyah Diaz, 28, a Republican who is already on the November ballot but who ran in the Democratic primary to increase her chances.

The write-in process confused many voters, and both Wilkerson and Chang-Díaz said they had heard of problems at the polls, including stickers that got stuck in the voting machines.

Without votes from the eight precincts, Wilkerson had 5,466 votes, or 47.7 percent, to Chang-Díaz's 5,325 votes, or 46.5 percent. Kelleher took 393 votes, or 3.4 percent; and Diaz received 275 votes, or 2.4 percent. The district includes Chinatown, Fenway, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, the South End, Roxbury, and parts of Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Dorchester, and Mattapan.

Five of the precincts with uncounted votes are in Roxbury and Mattapan, where Wilkerson is very popular. One is in the South End, where both Wilkerson and Chang-Díaz appear to have done well. The other two lie in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood Chang-Díaz targeted, believing it might be less loyal to the incumbent because they were added when the district was redrawn in 2002.

This is what I mean these poll workers received additional training on how to handle these votes yet still managed to mess it up. What a system!!!