Vermont election officials reported a mostly smooth election on Tuesday, but acknowledged at least a dozen complaints from city and town clerks regarding vote counting machines. “The latest I heard I think we had 12 (complaints),” Will Senning, Vermont’s director of elections, told Vermont Watchdog Tuesday afternoon. AccuVote-OS machines have been the digital ballot counters of choice for more than a decade in New England states. About 135 towns in Vermont use the machines to tally election results from paper ballots. While the standalone units are generally considered safe because they don’t connect to the Internet, computer security experts say they are vulnerable to hackers through the machines’ detachable memory cards. Those cards are managed by a single private company, LHS Associates, of Salem, N.H.
Senning refused to say what glitches were reported or reveal which towns were getting help. However, he said a half dozen LHS service experts were positioned around the state as a precaution, and could reach any polling place within about an hour.
“The guy who’s in my office is able to look at their home base and tell me all of the calls that have come in and how they’ve been resolved.” Senning said.
According to statistics from the Secretary of State’s office, Vermont was on track for a record-breaking voter turnout, especially with absentee ballots. At 2:30 p.m., the official count of returned absentee votes stood at 92,856, just shy of the record 94,664 absentee ballots cast in 2008.
Full Article: Vermont election mostly smooth, but voting machine glitches reported – Watchdog.org.