April 04, 2006

ES&S explains voting system failures

"At its meeting this morning, an official from Election Systems & Software, the Omaha, Neb., maker of the county's new optical scan voting system, explained to the board why computer memory cards in the new system have failed repeatedly. The memory cards store vote tabulations data.

Problems with memory cards began when the cards were switched from an Asian manufacturer to one in the United States, Janet Buchanan, director of account services for ES&S, told the board.

Once the problems were discovered, ES&S sent one of its engineers to the Vikant Corp., the Illinois contractor that makes the cards, to help correct the problem.

She said the faulty cards had a circuit board error and did not have their batteries properly charged in the manufacturing process, which caused them to have repeated low-battery or dead-battery issues.

The problems have been corrected, she said.

Buchanan told the board that 349 new memory cards would arrive in Akron today, all of which were made after the manufacturing errors were addressed. The county voting equipment includes 525 of the cards -- one for each of the county's 475 precincts and 50 extras.

An initial batch of 176 were made overseas and never had problems. ES&S had sent several batches of cards to replace the other 349, and had believed they were all working properly.

However, in additional testing Friday, more failures were discovered, resulting in the company again replacing all 349 cards."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at April 4, 2006 04:18 PM