DAYTON — The maker of Montgomery County's electronic voting machines is blaming a damaged memory card for the loss of five ballots on Election Day.
Board of Elections Director Steve Harsman said Premier Election Solutions' preliminary report, however, does not indicate how the card became damaged or, more importantly, why the company's software did not detect the problem or correct it.
The five missing ballots from a single precinct in Trotwood on Nov. 4 were discovered only because that precinct was one counted in a special audit of electronic voting machine results ordered statewide by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.
Once the problem was discovered during the audit, the votes were retrieved from the machine's backup system and added to final election results more than one month after the election. It was the first time the anomaly was found nationwide.