As the optical scanners read the election-day ballots, occasionally they added votes. While County Election Commissioner David Shively explained that the software was reading ballots twice, ES&S referred to the misread as a mechanical problem.*

Inexplicably, both Shively and the Nebraska deputy secretary of state for elections, Neal Erickson, agreed that "the malfunctions were not the type that taint vote counts."

... Shively said it became clear after 2 p.m. Tuesday that problems existed. At that time, officials began testing the six machines — four for election-day ballots, two on loan from Election Systems & Software to count absentee ballots — and found that two were not correctly matching results.

That came as a surprise, Shively said, because all were tested late last week and performed well.

Then the two-ballot problem described by Shively began, plaguing almost all the machines, drastically slowing the count.