Officials have signed off on a patched version of the software program that will power Johnson County’s voting system next month. The question is, will it work? A month and a half after the company announced it had rewritten the portion of its software program that led to massive reporting delays in the August primary elections, Election Systems & Software has received federal and state certification for the software’s use in the Nov. 6 general election, Johnson County announced today. ES&S submitted the corrected software program to the Election Assistance Commission for review on Sept. 5 and received notice of certification on Oct. 4. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office announced today that it was granting state certification to the system as well.
The rollout of the county’s new $10.5 million ExpressVote system was marred by the software error, which prevented the Election Office from producing final results until 13 hours after polls closed. The specific combination of ExpressVote machines and software fielded by Johnson County in August had not been used in a live election anywhere else in the country.
Johnson County Election Commissioner Ronnie Metsker stood by the company publicly after the debacle, but emails made available through a public records request by reporter Roxie Hammill on assignment for The Pitch revealed that his patience with ES&S was wearing thin.