Equipment testing delays absentee voting another day  (SC)

ALEXIS GARROBO   The Island Packet   07 October 2008

For the second day this week, voters who went to cast absentee ballots Tuesday in the Nov. 4 general and presidential elections discovered Beaufort County voting machines weren't ready yet.

"It's not really anything out of the ordinary," said S.C. State Election Commission public information officer Chris Whitmire. "It's the time in the voting process where (voting offices) get these things ready."

The machines weren't available for voters Tuesday because the testing, which is used to ensurethe ballots correctly record votes, took longer than expected, said Beaufort County elections office director Agnes Garvin. On Monday, the machines weren't ready because the county discovered Sunday it had the wrong password needed to upload its ballot information to the state commission for approval.

The county had to wait until the state commission opened Monday to receive a correct password before it could resume preparations.

Testing the machines is "not an overnight job," Garvin said. "Once we got the password, we still had to do the testing."

Garvin said that testing is time consuming because 48 ballot stylehave to be matched with the correct precincts. There are 84 county precincts.

"This is a bigger election," Garvin said. "It normally takes a couple of hours (to do the testing), but this is taking much longer."

Testing continued Tuesday afternoon. Once completed, the office must clear the test data before the machines are ready to hit the street.

Machines at the Beaufort office at 15 John Galt Road and the Hilton Head Island office in Town Hall should be open by today, if testing is completed, Garvin said. However, she suggested that voters call 843-470-3759 to make sure machines are ready.

State law requires voting to open at least two weeks before the election. But Garvin said elections in Beaufort County generally open at least three weeks early because there is a high volume of voters who request absentee ballots. On Tuesday, there were 4,500 Beaufort County voters registered to cast an absentee ballot.