Printers cast doubt on voting machines

The inaugural use of voting machines Tuesday raised an important question in the mind of Boone County’s top election official: Will the paper trail or the electronic count prevail if there is a discrepancy in future elections?

“When you have a problem with the paper and you know the paper is wrong and the device is correct, where do you go?” Boone County Clerk Wendy Noren said Wednesday.

The faulty design of printers in the new voting machines caused problems in getting the paper trail of Tuesday’s elections, Noren said.

“Things were jamming,” she said. “We had places where the paper was put in backwards. It looks like it’s printing, but it doesn’t.”

One machine was installed in each polling place Tuesday. Noren said she would not buy more until the printing issue was solved, despite their popularity.

In both St. Louis County and Kansas City, problems in a few precincts delayed complete election results until Wednesday.

Poll workers in 12 of St. Louis County’s 628 precincts failed to follow proper procedures when shutting down the machines at the end of Tuesday’s elections, said John Diehl, chairman of the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners.

As a result, workers at the county’s election headquarters could not validate that the computerized ballot memory cards delivered to them in fact came from the voting machines in those precincts, Diehl said. Election workers had to wait until Wednesday morning to gain access to the voting machines, which had been locked up overnight at the polling places, he said.

In Kansas City, election director Ray James said officials had trouble locating the electronic ballot memory cards from new machines used in four of the city’s more than 180 precincts.

In Boone County, election judges and troubleshooters were present in polling places to show voters how to use the machines and ensure that each vote would be cast accurately.

“We were very careful about any anomaly, looking into it,” Noren said. “They are normally things you do post election night. We did it election night.”

The use of voting machines was mandated by the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act. The law requires machines that check voters’ ballots before they are cast and machines that are accessible to people with disabilities.

“Forty-two percent of the people voted on the touchscreens, Noren said, “... which is amazing because in most places they had to stand in line to vote on the touchscreens.”

Thanks to an audio track and buttons engraved in Braille, the machines allowed visually-impaired Boone County citizens to vote secretly for the first time.

“I’m 51, and it was the first time I’ve ever voted without using a live reader,” said Debbie Wunder, vice-president of the Columbia chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. “That was a very, very good experience. I liked the privacy, I liked being able to cast my own vote independently.”

While there were no problems Tuesday, Noren said the issues with printing could be problematic if there are close races in the November general election.

Criteria are needed before an election to determine the final count, she said.

“You don’t want to do that in litigation after an election.”

In accordance with Missouri law, one precinct will be chosen at random and its votes handcounted before Tuesday.

Noren said recounting all votes against the paper trail would take months and a lot of staff.

“If you had an election for president, Inauguration Day would pass, without a recount,” she said.

- The Associated Press contributed to this report.