Can't anyone here run an election?

I've asked that question before but, of course, it's a common question in Palm Beach County.

This time, in a city commission election in West Palm Beach this past week, some 700 votes originally weren't counted, and were added into the results only after an audit to test the accuracy and reliability of the new optical-scan voting system. The election was considered a key test of the new system.

[Runner-up Gregg] Weiss said he is considering asking for a public inspection of all 4,792 ballots but will first try to talk with Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson about the issue. As of Friday evening, he hadn't received a return phone call, he said.

"Woo-hoo. I'm going to have to go out and celebrate tonight, I guess," he said, referring to his new second-place finish. "Are they sure they got them all?"

During the audit in the two days after the election, three cartridges containing vote totals were labeled "suspended," meaning their votes hadn't been counted on election night when all the cartridges were brought to a tabulation center to be "read" by vote-counting machines, said elections office spokeswoman Kathy Adams.

After the audit, they were read and the votes were added to the totals. The cartridges were secure and accounted for at all times, Adams said.

In the end, the system worked the way it was supposed to, she said. The results posted on the elections office Web site and on the county's cable TV channel are unofficial until after the audit, she noted.

"That's why it's marked unofficial, because when they do the audit, they find out if anything was not included," Adams said.

She said the office didn't know why the cartridges weren't read properly the first time. She said it was possible that one reader wasn't working properly and that all three cartridges were read by that reader.

"That's one of the things that they're researching now," she said. "That was the fortunate part of being able to have an election like this, before the primary."

Well, yes, there's always an audit. But in a place like Palm Beach County, where election results are scrutinized carefully because of, um, past history, isn't it doubly important to have a system that works the first time? Doesn't exactly give one confidence going into the August primary and November general election, does it?