An error with the Secretary of State’s election night reporting system caused an hour and a half delay in El Paso County election results Tuesday night, county officials said.

A programming error on the Colorado Secretary of State’s website caused an over count of total ballots even though the results reported by El Paso County were correct, the county’s Information Technology Supervisor Karl Nordstrom said.

When officials discovered the over count, they deleted a document from the county’s election website that had early return results. The original report had the correct ballot total and correct vote totals for all questions and races, Nordstrom said.

County officials later determined the state’s site was in error. A section of the county website that had initially been set aside for vote count updates was later replaced by a link to the Secretary of State’s website and a statement from El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman which said in part: “Elections Department has many safeguards in place to ensure the accuracy and validity of the vote totals when they are reported to the public,” and that the delay in posting results was due to an “abundance of caution.”

After the initial results document on the county website was deleted, results were not reported again until they appeared on the Secretary of State’s website around 9 p.m. The Secretary of State’s site was manually corrected.

“The delay in results was due to the abundance of caution,” Broerman said.

El Paso County Commissioner Holly Williams said the situation would be investigated, but she has full confidence in the elections process.

“We look forward to hearing updates from the SOS office after the review to learn what may have transpired with their Election Night Reporting system,” Broerman’s statement said.

The Gazette requested comment from the Secretary of State’s office and did not receive a response.

Gazette reporters Breeanna Jent, Evan Ochsner, Mary Shinn, and Jessica Snouwaert contributed to this report.