The marvels of electricity (Updated)

The Sentinel-Record in Hot Springs reports this morning that the Garland County Election Commission has junked the electronic voting machines being used there for early voting:

    Voters expecting to use the county’s new touchscreen voting machines for early voting are out of luck. Due to programming problems, the Garland County Election Commission had to pull the plug on the machines at all three early voting locations.

    "We have not been able to get the (personalized electronic ballots) working on the touch screens," election commission Chairman Charles Tapp said. "We’re working on this."

    The PEBs store ballot and voting information on the voting machines. Tapp said that all the PEBs have been sent to Election Systems and Software, the company that was contracted to supply the entire state with touchscreen voting machines to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act, in Omaha, Neb. He added that Sebastian County is having a similar problem with their touch-screen voting machines.

    As a result, all early voting [in Garland County] is being done using paper ballots.