Indiana: ES&S glitches delay vote count.

[FogerRox]

Firm couldn’t test machines
State investigating election glitch

By DAN DAVIS
[e-mail]


BROWNSTOWN — Employees of Election Systems & Software failed to successfully test whether Jackson County’s voting systems could merge their results for Tuesday’s primary and school elections.
They tried but couldn’t get it done, Jackson County Clerk Sarah Benter said Thursday of ES&S employees.
“At first they thought it was that lightning affected our server, but that wasn’t a problem,” Benter said. “He (an ES&S employee) decided he didn’t know enough about one of the systems to really test it. He assured me, though, they would work.”
They didn’t.
And the Indiana Secretary of State’s office is looking into the problem here and in three other counties that had similar glitches.
With Tuesday night’s experience — combined with ES&S delays in delivering the new systems, software and ballots — Benter remains cautious about the firm’s promise that the system will work and ballots will be delivered well in advance of this fall’s general election.
Two ES&S workers had to use tapes from the county’s two voting systems, download the votes by precinct and then input them into what was essentially a spreadsheet to produce results, Benter said.
That tedious process delayed results for hours.

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http://www.tribtown.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=186&ArticleID=18889&TM=34834.61

Heres todays Election Reform News:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x426288#426305

[KeepItReal]

1. Blaming lightning? I've heard that before somewhere.

Then they say it is faulty code??

What is the certification process supposed to do here? Allow buggy code to be rolled out for elections?

This should be simple arithmetic used in programming. I say again: A high-schooler could write vote counting software.

If the people holding the election are not savvy enough to manage the elections systems, they should move to something more their speed, like lever machines, or paper ballots. Letting ES&S people "fix" the problem and tally the votes?!?

[FogerRox]

2. Additionally

State to probe voting problems in 4 southern Indiana counties
Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS - State officials will investigate problems with voting systems in four Indiana counties where determining winners in Tuesday's primary became so cumbersome that workers in one county gave up tabulating returns.

Secretary of State Todd Rokita's chief counsel will look at Clark, Harrison, Jackson and Washington counties' voting systems, which were sold and maintained by Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software.

The company was under state scrutiny well before the primary.

Last month, Rokita's office issued a notice of violation against ES&S for problems that included improper programming and the late delivery of ballots.

Although voting went smoothly Tuesday across most of the state, the primary was chaotic for officials in the four counties, where workers were forced to manually enter votes for each candidate in each precinct.

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http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/14500511.htm