NORTH PROVIDENCE — Soon after the polls closed Tuesday night, John Sisto Jr. knew that he was trailing his opponent Joseph Giammarco in his bid to win back the District 2 Town Council seat he held before he became interim mayor.

He and other local Democratic stalwarts gathered at Julio’s on Mineral Spring Avenue and got the results the old-fashioned way, from runners stationed at the district’s five polling places who took the totals as they were announced.

The numbers were posted on a white posterboard at Julio’s for all to see, and Sisto was already saying he was going to ask for a recount.

But anyone looking for the results on the state Board of Elections Web site could have easily gone to bed Tuesday thinking that Sisto had won by nearly 200 votes.

In a snafu that Robert Kando, executive director of the state Board of Elections, says hasn’t happened in the 12 years the state has been using the current system, the numbers that were posted on the Web site were totally at odds with the actual results.

Kando and Joseph Vitale, account services manager for the Nebraska firm that provides the software and technical expertise to transmit the data to a computer at the Board of Elections, blamed the snafu on a fax machine linked to the phone line that was being used to transmit the data from North Providence.

“Apparently there was some interference with the transmission,” Kando said. “We are still investigating, but we suspect that the fax machine was the cause.”

Kerry Brusini, who directs the canvassing office in North Providence, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

According to Kando, the problem first became evident when employees at the local canvassing office called after 10 p.m. to ask why none of the results they transmitted had showed up on the state Web site.

“We said the results were not on the screen because we had not received any,” Kando said. “We advised them to try sending it again.”

After several tries, the North Providence canvassers believed, about 10:30 p.m., they finally succeeded in transmitting the results. That’s when they discovered something was wrong.

The numbers on the Web site did not match the results the canvassers had on the paper tabulations that came from the precincts. The most glaring discrepancy was in the Council District 2 race, with the Web site showing Sisto as the clear winner.

“This is the first time this has ever happened,” Kando said yesterday. “There will have to be an updating of our procedures because this sort of thing should not happen.”

Vitale says it was Brusini who first suggested that the source of the problem may have been the fax machine.

“They had been going through a fax machine connected to a phone line,” said Vitale. “She suggested that the fax machine be disconnected, and when they did that, everything went right through the way it was supposed to.”

It wasn’t until 11 that the Web site showed who really won the race.

In another primary night snafu, canvassers in Providence called it a night with only 96 percent of the ballots counted because, it was initially believed, that two memory packs were missing.

Providence officials learned yesterday that they were actually missing four packs. One of the packs located yesterday was found inside a box that was to be reserved for storing the paper ballots.

“We are very disappointed that this kind of thing would happen,” Kando said. “I can understand that after a long day poll workers may be anxious to leave, but it is disappointing when they are so anxious that they fail to complete their jobs.”

rdujardi@projo.com