The Secretary of the Board tells Fox 25's Kisha Henry the problem stemmed from technical difficulties with their automated letter opener, and he is taking full responsibility for the incident.

"This is my first General Election, and it's turning out to be quite memorable," says Jim Williams, Cleveland County Election Board Secretary. Williams has served the Oklahoma State Election Board for more than 20 years, but only recently started his current position in March of 2011. "I take responsibility and apologize for the embarrassment that this causes our office and our election system," Williams says.

"There is no excuse for what happened. This is very embarrassing to our agency and to our election system," he goes on. Williams says his crew faced technical difficulties Election Night. Their automated letter opener was slicing ballots in half. "When we determined that we were unable to use our automatic letter opener, we divided into teams and recruited additional help. (We could see that) a process that would normally take us about an hour to an hour-and-a-half, was going to take us more like six or seven hours," says Williams, noting the crew had to hand-open all of the envelopes.

"We did our best to train our recruited volunteers about the importance of what we were doing. At some point, one of the teams mixed in some of the unopened (ballots) with the envelopes," says Williams.

Those ballots were counted during an election meeting Friday, along with some provisional ballots. Candidates waited by, anxiously.

"It feels like I'm standing in line for a roller coaster and I don't like roller coasters," joked Rep. Aaron Stiles, the incumbent in the race for House District 45-- a close race, depending on those extra ballots. Rep. Stiles held the lead over Democrat Paula Roberts before the extra absentee and provisional ballots were tallied.

During the process of trying to tally those votes, more technical difficulties postponed the process. The candidates continued to wait patiently. "These guys do an amazing job and I want to say thank you to them because no one knows how hard this job is more than I do," says Roberts, who served as the Cleveland County Election Board Secretary before Williams. "We're just waiting on them to get through with the process. We believe in the process," she says.

By the end of the night, the extra ballot votes cancelled each other out, keeping Rep. Stiles in the lead with 18 votes. Roberts' camp has requested a recount. "We just feel like we owe it to our voters and supporters to pursue this to the very end and see what happens because they've put a lot of time, and money, and effort into this election and we want to make sure everything is done correctly and fairly. Voting is so important and we want to make sure all the votes count," she says.

The recount request will leave an official winner to be declared next week. "This weekend, I would like to start thinking about what laws we're going to work on to help our state, and I'm sure she's probably thinking the exact same thing," says Rep. Stiles. "I'm ready for resolution."

It is unclear whether anyone will face repercussions for the ballot mistake. Paul Ziriax, the Secretary of the Oklahoma State Election Board sent us this statement, "State law requires mail absentee ballots to be counted on the date of the election and requires all ballots to be secured with the county election on election night. The Cleveland County Election Board secretary was advised by this office to seek and follow the legal advice of his district attorney in this matter. The State Election Board will review the facts of this matter in the days and weeks ahead."

Meanwhile, Williams says his first General Election will be used as a learning experience. "We certainly will use this as a training example. You have to be very careful about how you're handling (the ballots) and where all the materials are place, and certainly, before anything is put away for the night, we have to do a final check of all of the supply and storage boxes," he says.