Beacon Journal | 04/30/2006 | Voting chief in Summit more upbeat

Beacon Journal | 04/30/2006 | Voting chief in Summit more upbeat: "In training, poll workers and even instructors from Election Systems & Software, the Omaha, Neb., maker of the county's new voting system, have inserted the cards incorrectly, causing them to get stuck in the scanners.

When that happens, the scanner has to be taken apart and the card removed, but Williams said extra scanners and machines are on standby to replace any with jammed cards Tuesday.

Of greater concerns are the memory cards themselves; in testing, they failed at a rate as high as 30 percent.

ES&S acknowledged a manufacturing defect and recalled many of them, but even replacement cards have failed to work for a variety of reasons.

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Jones said the board had believed that ES&S was going to provide company-trained technicians, as he believes its contract requires.

Instead, the company reached out to the Delta Gamma sorority to hire college students for the work. He said ES&S officials knew the sorority president and asked her to recruit interested fraternity or sorority members.

The students, who are not a bipartisan group, were to undergo training at the elections board Saturday, but Jones said he expects the board to vote in its meeting Monday to bar them from the polls and to ask ES&S for a refund of the more than $6,000 the county is paying for the technicians.

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