Here We Go Again!

Sarasota told of new voting machine glitch

Sarasota County’s new voting machines have a programming glitch that could cause votes to be lost on Election Day, the company that makes the system says.

Premier Elections Solutions Inc. sent a letter to Sarasota County election officials on Thursday warning them that memory cards used in new $3 million optical scan voting system could misread votes. Similar letters have gone to more than 1,700 other cities and counties in 34 starts warning of similar problems.

Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent said the company gave her some procedures to use to make sure votes are not lost. Dent said she will review those procedures with her staff today.

“We know what to do,” Dent said.

The primary election is Tuesday. Early voting for that election has been going on since Aug. 11.

According to the company, computers that scan paper ballots at each precinct work fine. But when the memory cards from those devices are brought to a central computer system to tally all the results, votes can be lost.

The dropped vote problem dates back to 2006 in Ohio. At least 1,000 total votes were dropped in nine Ohio counties over the course of a handful of elections, including the March presidential primary. The errors were in all cases discovered and corrected within several hours.

Premier Election Solutions previously had said complications with antivirus software caused the problem, but now the company acknowledges that the problem is with the machines themselves.