St. Clair County Probate Judge Andrew Weathington said Wednesday morning a ballot printing error that caused a two-hour extension of polling hours on Tuesday was handled as well as possible.

Weathington said he was unsure how many provisional ballots were cast after normal hours because of the mistake but said those votes would count.

By a court order issued in response to the situation, polling hours were extended from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at 15 precincts where ballots were missing two amendments, including one specifically dealing with school boards in St. Clair County.

Weathington said the county followed a state law that governs such situations. He said people who got in line to vote after 7 p.m. at the 15 locations voted provisional ballots, but said those would be counted.

“I don’t know how many provisionals there were last night because those rosters are sealed and all that stuff is put up,” Weathington said.

“And so the board of registrars will go to work, I’m assuming, today, and probably every day between now and next Tuesday, sorting all that stuff out, and then we’ll find out then how many there are.”

The company that printed the ballots, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), said about 28,000 ballots were missing the two amendments. The company accepted blame for the mistake and printed replacement ballots on Tuesday.

Weathington said the St. Clair County sheriff’s office picked up the replacement ballots from the printer in Birmingham and brought them back to St. Clair.

“ES & S really stepped up once they got going and started printing,” Weathington said. “Our sheriff’s office did an amazing job picking stuff up and bringing it back to St. Clair County, and then getting it dispersed once it got here.

“I mean, everybody involved really stepped up. We had people across the county reaching out asking how can we help? How can we be of any assistance? It was a tough thing to do, but it was amazing to see how everybody came together and fought it.”

Unofficial election results posted by the county showed the St. Clair County amendment received strong support, with 26,595 yes votes, or 69%, compared to 12,018 no votes, or 31%.

Asked if he was confident that everybody who wanted to vote on the amendments was able to do so, Weathington said, “I don’t know that there’s any way to answer that question. But I know that we made as good an effort as we could make. I feel like that we did everything that we could possibly do to make that happen.”