JEFFERSON — Around 11 p.m. election night, it just stopped.

The machine that was supposed to count votes from 15 precincts in Greene County just stopped.

In one of the most closely contested elections in the nation’s history, the central count machine, located in Jefferson at the Greene County Courthouse, stopped functioning with votes from six precincts still uncounted, said Greene County Auditor Jane Heun.

“I thought, we could sit here all night and have nothing or go home,” Heun said.

About 1,285 votes had been processed through the refrigerator-sized computer before everything came to a halt.

Jerry Roberts, station manager for KDLY radio, was reporting the count when he realized something was wrong.

“The motor was whirring like it was grinding corn,” he said.

“But it was handled very professionally by the staff here.”

Roberts said in the dozen years he has worked for KDLY, nothing has been quite like this.

“It was like, ‘How late are we going to be here?'” he said.

While Heun remained on hold with Election Systems and Software in Omaha, her husband opened doors and pushed buttons trying to get something working.

“They tried to shut the machine off, but that didn’t do anything,” Heun said.

By 8 a.m. Wednesday, a new machine had arrived at the courthouse.

Billie Jo Hoskins, deputy auditor for Greene County, spent the morning working with officials from Election Systems and Software recounting ballots and monitoring the new machine. By mid-morning, she said, she was more than a little tired.

The recount of ballots took just over an hour and a half on Wednesday, Hoskins said. Provisional ballots were to be counted Thursday afternoon, she said.

Dan Erker, Election Systems and Software technician, drove from Omaha on Wednesday morning to supervise the machine.

Erker said it doesn’t take long to recount votes.

“I’m sorry it happened, but I don’t know what we would have done different to prevent it,” Heun said.