Douglas County residents have almost forgotten what it’s like to have an efficiently run election with timely results, no mistakes and no excuses.

There is every reason the ability to improve the county’s embarrassing record on elections should be an issue in the current county clerk’s race.

Even with a low primary turnout of just over 25 percent, the Douglas County Clerk’s Office was unable to turn out timely reports on Tuesday’s election. Douglas County was among the last 20 counties in the state to forward its final election results to the Kansas secretary of state. Unlike most other counties, Douglas County provided no partial returns, so the state had no information until the final count was complete.

In the 3rd District congressional race, which still is too close to call, everyone was waiting for any results from Douglas County until after the much larger counties of Wyandotte and Johnson had completed and reported their counts.

The Douglas County Clerk’s Office didn’t have the count, but it, as always, had an excuse. High humidity had made some ballots stick together as they were fed into the computer counting machine at the courthouse. The local officials apparently weren’t as well-prepared or resourceful as their counterparts in Franklin County who simply turned the air-conditioning down to 61 degrees and sprayed the ballots with compressed air to smooth the process.

Local voters probably would be patient with an occasional glitch like the high-humidity issue, but election snafus seem to have become the rule rather than the exception in Douglas County. In April 2003, 7,000 ballots were double-counted, requiring a recount that changed the third-place finisher in the Lawrence City Commission race. Earlier that day ballots had to be photocopied and subsequently hand-counted because some polling places ran out.

In 2000, totals also were revised after it was found that some ballots had been counted twice. In 1998, 3,000 votes that would have turned a race for a state school board seat into a virtual tie were lost when Douglas County forwarded its results to the secretary of state.

Such sloppy handling of ballots undercuts the credibility of local elections and is embarrassing to the county. Although the county clerk’s excuses often focus on malfunctioning vote-counting machines, it seems that many of the problems relate to operator error or issues that could have been anticipated and corrected.

The Election Day performance of the clerk’s office over the past five years could easily be used to bolster the case for filling the office with an appointed, professional person rather than someone elected by popular vote. County Clerk Patty Jaimes will retire at the end of this term, and if the string of election mishaps continue under her successor, voters may be convinced that appointment is a better course.

Elections probably are the most important, and certainly the most visible, service the county clerk provides to county residents. Douglas County deserves — and should demand from its next clerk — elections that are more efficient and reliable.