Ballot card problems delayed election returns

03/04/04
Eric Beavers
Walker County election officials worked until after midnight, following Tuesday’s election, to rectify problems tallying results.

Problems became apparent with Walker’s first returns about 9 p.m. when neighboring counties were wrapping up their tallies. A Diebold computer technician began providing incorrect numbers to news organizations. The botched returns were fed to the media for more than two hours after the polls closed before the problem was corrected.

“Their technicians were not loading something right,” Walker County Board of Elections and Registration Chief Clerk Barbara Berry said Wednesday. “That’s the reason we can’t even use the modems to get our results in. We have tried and tried to get our results in by modem, and something is wrong somewhere.”

The modems, housed inside the electronic voting machine, are intended to transmit results automatically and quickly to the central server in Berry’s office at the Walker County Courthouse.

Diebold manufactures and supports the electronic voting machines used across Georgia.

Poll workers at the courthouse said elections ran more smoothly using paper ballots.

“I work so hard in this office, and then for some little thing to rip everything apart for me after 7 p.m. is just unbelievable,” Berry said, referring to the modem failures. “It’s humiliating.”

Only a handful of modem transmissions have been successful since the electronic voting machines were introduced last year, Walker Elections board member Harold “Eddie” Hughes said.

“Diebold just pushes us aside,” Berry said, adding she does not understand the company’s actions or why results came in as they did. “We don’t have good representation.”

Two representatives from the company in February programmed the machines for the March 2 election, Berry said. Two different representatives arrived on election night, including a field worker to manage problems at the precincts and another person to manage the computer at the election office in LaFayette.

A representative from Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox’s office also attended the election at Berry’s office.

“It’s unexplainable the reason we are not receiving our results,” Berry said. “I feel like I need an explanation from someone.

“We had a three-day training for all of the poll managers and assistant managers,” Berry said.

Poll managers in Fairview and Daugherty failed to return all of the voting equipment from their precincts, which had to be retrieved before votes could be tallied, Berry said.

“If we send 15 machines to a precinct, regardless of whether a voter uses that machine, it has to be zeroed out,” Berry said. “It has to be opened and closed just like all the other machines.”

Poll workers worried aloud about how late they will be working during the November general election, when the ballot will be filled with many more choices than Tuesday’s ballots.

The voting machines have been used for six elections, three of which were for the same State House District 1 race. Problems have cropped up at every election.