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Glitch hits Barry County voting machines
WOOD TV 8. May 5, 2006
By DAN BEWLEY

Update: HASTINGS ? Barry County was all set for yesterday's election. New voting machines were installed and ready to go.

But they weren't.

A glitch in a computer program is believed to be the cause of a problem with the voting machines in Barry County. All of the ballots had to be counted by hand after county officials noticed the optical scan machines scrambled the results.

This glitch affected 15 of the 16 Barry County townships, including the city of Hastings. All the votes had to be hand-counted.
 
In an optical scan machine, the ballot is ed and the machine records the vote. When the polls close, the clerks tally the final numbers and the machine prints the results. That's when the problem came to light.

Hastings city clerk Tom Emery did a double take.

"In the first precinct that we looked at, one candidate got zero votes, but there were 90 write-ins out of 125 votes cast," he said. "Especially since the person who got zero votes was the person that I voted for, so I knew the zero was wrong."

In the Thornapple school board race, the computer had both candidates with zero votes, but the write-in total was 35. The biggest problem, said Barry County clerk Debbie Smith, was for races dealing with bond proposals.

"All of the printouts where there were any bond proposals showed a zero total for a yes vote," she said, "and it appears the actual votes cast as yes showed under the no total and the no total wasn't appearing on the tape anywhere."

The State of Michigan bought each $4000 machine for the county after federal law required a statewide standard for the way voters cast their ballots. Tuesday's election was the first time Barry County used these particular optical scan machines. The county had used a previous model before without having any problems. Why the printouts were scrambled remains a mystery.

"It would all be speculation at this point," Smith said, "whether the problem was with the actual ballot printing or with the memory card programming."

24 Hour News 8 called several other West Michigan election offices, and no one reported any problems. 24 Hour News 8 also spoke with a representative from Diebold, the company that made the machines. He said the machines are typically reliable and he'll look into the problem.

 



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