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Computer glitch still baffles county clerk
By Kristin Miller, The News-Dispatch
LaPorte - The day after a two-and-a-half-hour delay in counting
ballots due to a glitch in a computer program, LaPorte County election
officials are still trying to figure out what happened.
"Maybe there was a power surge," LaPorte County Clerk
Lynne Spevak said. "Something zapped it."
At about 7 p.m. Tuesday, it was noticed that the first two or three
printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number
of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters.
That means the total number of voters for the county would be
22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters.
Vote counting resumed at about 9:30 p.m.
Spevak said workers at the clerk's office thought a computer
correction could be done once they received a software patch from Election
Systems and Software, the Chicago company that provided the tabulation
software. However, the patch did not work.
"We thought we could get a copy of it e-mailed file to us and
start all over, but once the program was downloaded from Chicago, it still
didn't work right," Spevak said.
Spevak said the Board of Election was in contact with Indianapolis
to see if they could certify the vote. She said Wednesday that LaPorte
County election officials might have to manually input the information so
that the ballots could be certified with the state.
Contact reporter Kristin Miller at kmiller@thenewsdispatch.com
