Firm couldn’t test machines
State investigating election glitch
By DAN DAVIS
ddavis@tribtown.com
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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