Glitches bug machine vote

[Rose Siding]

Arkansas’ first stab at an electronic election day started with equipment glitches. When touchscreen voting did work, voters gave it rave reviews.

Many touch-screen voting machines weren’t ready when polls opened, leaving Northwest Arkansas’ earliest voters casting traditional paper ballots.

Washington County Election Commission Chairman John Logan Burrow estimated that 40 of the county’s 57 polling sites did not have their electronic machines running by the 7: 30 a. m. start of voting. Problems persisted through the morning, and the electronic machine at the First Church of the Nazarene in Springdale didn’t switch on until 1 p. m., Burrow said.

“It’s a daunting task to start them up for the first time for anybody,” Burrow said. “It’s just like the first time you ever turn on your computer, and you discover this thing called Windows, and it’s more complicated than you ever dreamed possible.”
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Election planners statewide had trouble obtaining electronic ballot programming for the touch-screen machines, paper ballots and software to program optical-scan, vote-counting machines.

Many complained that Election Systems & Software’s Little Rock office was understaffed, overwhelmed and unresponsive to their needs.

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/155551/