The state Office of Elections trouble-shot election equipment at Kaua’i Community College yesterday in preparation for the Nov. 7 general election. “We are looking at areas where we can improve,” said Rex Quidilla, a spokesman with the elections office. Last
The state Office of Elections trouble-shot election equipment at Kaua’i
Community College yesterday in preparation for the Nov. 7 general
election.
“We are looking at areas where we can improve,” said Rex
Quidilla, a spokesman with the elections office.
Last Saturday’s primary
election went off largely without any problems on Kaua’i except for a minor
problem that resulted in about a one-hour delay in the release of the final
vote count for elections on the island, Quidilla said.
At 9 p.m., an
emplpoyee with Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the mainland company
that developed the automated voting system, mistakenly cleared a record of
accumulated votes from election equipment, Quidilla said.
“There was no
data lost,” he said. “We had to rebuild the data from backup diskettes. The
integrity of the election was never in doubt.”
The data was restored after
the mistake was spotted by Kaua’i County elections officials, Quidilla
said.
ES&S, based in Omaha, Neb., has a contract to conduct elections
statewide through 2006. Its system debuted in Hawai’i in the 1998 election,
drawing some criticism for ballot-counting problems that delayed final results.
In August this year, election officials characterized the problems as
relatively minor.
Staff writer Lester Chang can be reached at
245-3681 (ext. 225) and lchang@pulitzer.net
