In an apparent effort to save money, the Providence Journal abandoned its traditional use of runners to gather election tallies during Rhode Island’s September 12 primary, and the newspaper Web site’s claim to have immediate results stumbled because of a computer glitch at the state Board of Elections.

This meant that besides US Senator Lincoln Chafee, another big winner on primary night was WPRI-WNAC-TV (Channels 12, 64) — which set the pace in reporting the story of Chafee’s eight-point victory over GOP challenger Stephen P. Laffey.

Although www.projo.com had advertised that it would have primary returns starting when the polls closed at 9 pm, the ProJo — reportedly as a cost-cutting move — did away with its longtime use of runners to gather voting results, leaving it at the mercy of an information blackout on the state Board of Elections’ Web site. As a result, projo.com didn’t have primary results until a fair bit later in the night.

At the Providence Biltmore, where hundreds of Chafee’s supporters gathered, most eyes were glued to televisions tuned to WPRI-WNAC — which easily outpaced traditional ratings leader WJAR-TV (Channel 10) in detailing the unfolding story of the senator’s primary win. “It seems to me that we had a good organizational plan going in and the right people in the right places, and fortunately, it paid off for us,” says WPRI-WNAC news director Joe Abouzeid. (Disclosure: I am a frequent panelist on WPRI-WNAC’s Newsmakers.)

Betty-Jo Cugini, WJAR’s vice president of news, says the station lagged behind since it was relying for results on the Associated Press, and because the AP didn’t have anyone stationed at the Board of Elections. “I think we all learned a tough lesson,” about the pratfalls of technology, she says, adding that AP has pledged to deploy someone at the Election Board during future elections. Despite the lag, Channel 10 was able to catch up before 11 pm, and it was still the ratings winner for the night, Cugini says.

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By the day after the primary, the ProJo had thorough coverage on Chafee’s win over Laffey, complete with tables depicting the vote in all but a handful of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns.

On Monday, an item in the Journal’s weekly “Political Scene” column described how “people who relied on the state Board of Elections Web sites for vote results [on primary night] had a long wait on their hands: Polls statewide closed at 9 pm, but the Web site showed no results at all until 10:10. By that time, local TV stations were declaring winners in several races.”

The item went on to note, “The plan was to update the Web site in real time as results were tallied at the board’s offices . . . . The delay came because ES&S, the company that handles data for the board, inadvertently used a computer with an activated security lock that prevented the results from posting on the Web . . . Once officials realized the results weren’t posting, they disabled the lock.”

This report didn’t mention how ProJo scribes were among those left in the lurch by the Board of Elections’ computer problem.