Here we go again: more election problems in Palm Beach County

I'm running out of clever blog post titles to describe the mess that is Palm Beach County when it comes to elections.

We thought we were out of the woods when the Legislature approved paper ballots to replace those horrendous touchscreen systems (granted, in the same bill that created a shitstorm when Florida's primaries were moved to January 29), but obviously that's not the case. At least, it's not when someone manages to lose 3,500 ballots in a race for county circuit court. That amounts to 3% of all ballots cast.

During the recount, election workers who weren't necessarily computer-savvy entered the ballots into the machines. [County commissioner and canvassing board member Mary] McCarty acknowledges there were problems.

"We don't believe anyone stole (the missing ballots), but I believe they might have gotten mixed up, maybe some boxes were mixed up. The machine recount was going really fast, all the machines were going, guys pulling boxes off the shelf, putting boxes back on the shelf. I just don't know what happened.

"One thing's for sure: 3,000 ballots didn't walk out of one precinct. We have different ballot counts in many precincts in the county. There's something in the system that needs to be fixed."

Phil Foster, a Sequoia Voting Systems executive, said proper checks and balances weren't in place to track the ballots.

"Just what I've seen today, it's quite confusing," he said.

Sequoia sent a crew late last week to re-create the election in hopes of figuring out what went wrong.

McCarty said it will take weeks to unravel.

"We will get to the bottom of this," she said. "And then find out what people to point fingers at and whose fault it was."

I guess we should be grateful Diebold isn't involved. But whether it's malfeasance or incompetence, something's gotta give. One time, maybe even two times, sure -- human error or machine malfunction, I get that. However, we're developing a pattern here -- a very dangerous pattern of mistakes as we approach the most important federal election of our lifetimes.

Heckuva job, Palm Beach County elections officials. Heckuva job.