A full-day test of the electronic poll books that caused so many problemsaround the state on primary election day apparently went off with virtually no problems using thousands of practice ?voters? Tuesday, according to election officials and executives of the manufacturer.
“We had a nice, smooth pretend election,” said Michael Lindroos, vice president of Diebold Election Systems.
At a small ballroom at the BWI Marriott Hotel, Diebold and election officials set up polling places for four precincts?one each from Carroll, Montgomery and Wicomico counties and Baltimore City?and had volunteers use the names of real voters to vote multiple times. Some volunteers voted a number of times on different machines using different names.
By noon, more than 2,000 votes had been cast. None of the e-poll registration books, used to program the voting cards, had to reboot, as thousands did in the primary, and only five minor problems were identified, three of them from user error.
“I haven?t seen any of the problems I saw on election day,” said Gail Hatfield, elections administrator in Calvert County who spent the morning checking the operation of the poll books and voting machines. “I?m feeling a whole lot better. We need to prove to the public that this system is accurate and fair,” Hatfield said.
Diebold?s Maryland project manager Tom Feehan said the three major problems have been fixed, although there was still a lingering issue of the poll books losing connectivity with each other. But the major problem that caused the computers to reboot ? a pop-up screen with voter information that used up the computer?s active memory ? has been fixed, he said, as well as an occasional problem recognizing a voter card because of a mechanical connection. “We?ve done a lot of work narrowing the problem” on the connectivity, Feehan said.
There were no problems with the electronic voting machines themselves, the separate units on which voters cast their ballot by touch screen, he said.
State elections administrator Linda Lamone said the repaired machines likely will be used in the Nov. 7 election, if the test comes out positive. If not, paper printouts of registration information will be used as they were until this year.
