Voting problems plague 4 counties

INDIANAPOLIS -- State officials will investigate problems with voting systems in four Indiana counties where determining winners in Tuesday's primary became so cumbersome that workers in one county gave up tabulating returns.\nSecretary of State Todd Rokita's chief counsel will look at Clark, Harrison, Jackson and Washington counties' voting systems, which were sold and maintained by Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software.\nThe company was under state scrutiny well before the primary.\nLast month, Rokita's office issued a notice of violation against ES&S for problems that included improper programming and the late delivery of ballots.\nAlthough voting went smoothly Tuesday across most of the state, the primary was chaotic for officials in the four counties, where workers were forced to manually enter votes for each candidate in each precinct.\n"It's the first time we've ever experienced a problem of this significance," Clark County Clerk Keith Groth said. "It was a complete failure of a new programming system."\nRokita's spokesman, AJ Feeney-Ruiz, said the problems could result in more allegations being added to the civil complaint against the company, which supplies equipment to 27 counties.\nBefore Tuesday's problems, the Indiana Election Commission was also investigating ES&S. If it finds problems, the panel can ban the company from selling or leasing new voting systems in Indiana.\nIf Rokita finds that the company broke the law, he can fine it $300,000 for each violation.\nState election officials are also investigating another company, Indianapolis-based MicroVote General Corp., for its actions before the primary. But Feeney-Ruiz said county officials had no significant problems with MicroVote systems on Tuesday.\nAll four counties in question use the same combination of ES&S voting machines, including Optech Eagle machines that scan a paper ballot and iVotronic machines, which are designed to help people with disabilities cast their ballots privately.\nES&S spokesman Ken Fields said the machines tabulated the ballots accurately at the precinct. The problem came when county election workers tried to electronically put the individual machines' tallies into a central computer to determine totals for each candidate.\nWorkers had to manually enter the number of votes for each candidate in each precinct.\nAlthough some counties with the same combination of machines -- Optech Eagle and iVotronic -- experienced no difficulty, the problem in Washington County was so severe that exhausted election workers eventually gave up trying to determine winners after midnight Wednesday.\nThey locked up the election equipment and came back later Wednesday to start again.\n"We were all getting really tired," said Washington County Clerk Rita Martin.\nFields said the company is still investigating the problem and hopes to resolve the issue before the November election.