Indy Star: ES&S blasted for multiple mistakes, "don't care" attitude

[Amaryllis]

April 7, 2006

Counties dealing with ballot problems

By Vic Ryckaert
[e-mail]

"Marion County Clerk Doris Anne Sadler blasted a voting machine company this morning saying it supplied error-filled ballots for next month's primary election."

<snip>

(Article goes on to detail one major,serious problem after another)
-did not deliver absentee ballots in time and failed to program touch screen voting machines.
-did not print instructions on ballots
-Johnson County received its absentee ballots on Thursday, two weeks after the ballots were supposed to have been mailed to voters who submitted absentee applications
-failed to program Johnson County's touch screen voting machines.

This is the really disturbing part: "Sadler said she couldn't fire ES&S because there aren't many other options. Few voting machine companies are certified by the federal government, and Sadler said the others have similar problems."

And:
"I guess what bothered us the most is that it's like it's no big deal that they missed a statutory deadline," Jackson said of ES&S. "They're a big company and it's like they don't care, that they'll get (the ballots) to us when they get them done, and that's not acceptable. I'm extremely disappointed in the vendor."

These companies are peddling GARBAGE and election officials have no choice but to deal with them the way things stand! What if all election officials who are dissatisfied with vendors got together and did something en masse...The situation is getting ludicrous. How bad does it have to get before something is done?

"Two weeks ago, ES&S delivered its first batch of ballots for this election and Sadler said they were rife with mistakes. County officials found new errors in the replacement ballots and sent those back too. They received the latest batch late last week, Sadler said, and spent the weekend proofreading."

"They don't proof anything before they send it to us," Sadler said. "I would love to fire them. I've had three years of serious issues with this company."

"In Marion County, problems first surfaced in 2003 when ES&S provided software that was not fully certified by the Indiana Election Commission. The company compounded the problem by loading uncertified software on the touch-screen machines. It replaced the uncertified software with files that were incompatible with the programs that count the votes."

More: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2006...

Star reporter Jason Thomas contributed to this story.
Call Star reporter Vic Ryckaert at [phone].

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