From Deseret News archives:
Vote-machine glitches cause headaches
Long lines frustrated voters in some Salt Lake County precincts, such as at Highland High School, where the machines were not set up as quickly as expected. For early morning arrivals, that meant waiting for one machine with as many as 75 other voters.
For the most part, however, the problems were fixed within a couple hours, and reports of problems at other counties were minimal, Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert said.
Voters in other states also had Election Day headaches. In Indiana, Illinois, Georgia and Ohio, the new voting machines had faulty software.
In precincts in Indiana, Ohio and Florida, machine and poll worker problems led election officials to resort to paper ballots.
Lawyers went to court to extend voting hours in precincts in several states, including Colorado, Indiana and Ohio. The Utah machines were purchased from Diebold Elections Systems in 2004 at a cost of $25 million, most of which came from federal funding.
Considering this was the first general election test of the machines — they were used during this year's primary and last year in two cities during their municipal elections — they performed admirably, Herbert said.
"I view this as a very successful day," Herbert said just as the polls were closing. "There were a few hitches in the get along, but around the state it went very smoothly."
The biggest hitches were in Utah County, where handheld encoders that are used to program the voting cards malfunctioned, forcing voters to either vote by paper provisional ballots or return later. The county resorted to a backup plan, which allowed one of the machines to be used as an encoder in most of the precincts, with only six locations able to use the encoder.
Herbert said that the problem was most likely caused by human error, although it was not possible to tell who exactly would be at fault. Because the machines cannot be checked until after the results are certified in the next couple of weeks, it may be several weeks before the problem is determined.
Compounding the problems was a failure by workers to inform voters about the option to vote by paper ballot. The loss of one machine in each precinct also slowed down voting, although the county was trying to get extra machines to the locations reporting long lines.
People who arrived at 7 a.m. waited in line for an hour or more at dozens of polling locations in the county because of the malfunctioning encoders. Many would-be voters left before a backup system allowed voting to begin.
