And yes, Diebold's spokesman is named Mr. Riggall.

SOURCE: USATODAY.com

Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That Dropped Votes
Company acknowledges voting machine error

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A major voting machine maker has notified its customers in 34 states that a programming error discovered during testing may cause votes to be dropped when they are uploaded to a computer server from the machines' vote-holding memory cards.

Premier Election Solutions Inc. supplies touch-screen voting systems as well as scanners for paper ballots to large and small customers throughout the nation. The error communicated in a Tuesday product advisory occurs when multiple memory cards are being uploaded at the same time, and it is more likely to occur in jurisdictions that have several voters and use touch-screen voting systems, said Premier spokesman Chris Riggall.

The Allen, Texas-based Premier is a unit of North Canton-based Diebold Inc.

More voters and more touch-screen machines mean more memory cards. Each individual touch-screen machine has a memory card, and scanning machines that read thousands of paper ballots each only have one card.

In Ohio, where the glitch was discovered, it caused at least 1,000 total votes to be dropped in nine of the 44 counties that used Premier's equipment during the March presidential primary and previous elections. The dropped votes were discovered within several hours by election officials who noticed the memory cards weren't being read properly. Workers re-fed the cards into the server until they worked, and the votes were added to the overall vote totals.

Errors that did not produce dropped votes were discovered in three other counties.

The company had previously blamed the problem solely on complications with an antivirus software. Officials in Ohio's Butler County kept testing the machines and claimed that there was a problem with the machines themselves. That was later verified by Premier's own testing, which prompted the company to send out a product advisory to all of its customers.
The company said that antivirus software can cause the error, but that the programming glitch can produce the error even when the software isn't used.

" We are communicating to customers around the country, making sure that we're answering any questions concerning it," Riggall said.

Ohio will continue to use the Premier machines in the Nov. 4 election. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said identifying the cause of the problem will enable the state to prepare election officials to watch for the problem and correct it should it resurface. Premier said in its product advisory that the problem can be corrected as long as officials monitor whether the memory cards are being uploaded, and if they are not, reload them until they are.

" We are finalizing plans that will walk board officials through the process of identifying the problem, loading the affected memory cards and verifying that the votes are counted," said Brunner spokesman Kevin Kidder.
The company and state election officials said there are multiple layers of security in place, such as post-election audits that match voting machine totals with a paper trail, that will ensure that no votes are missed.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio's largest county and the home of Cleveland, dropped Premier touch-screen systems in 2007 after the system malfunctioned. The company sued the county for breach of contract. Brunner then countersued, citing the dropped votes that the company acknowledged in its letter to Brunner this week.

Premier spokesman Riggall said he could not comment on the lawsuit.