Changes made ballot processing easier, SOS says
by Guy Page
The Vermont Secretary of State (SOS) requested and received replacement memory cards for all Dominion voting machines prior to the August 9 primary election, an SOS spokesperson confirmed today.
As reported by Vermont Daily Chronicle in June, the SOS purchased all-new voting machines this year. All towns and cities not counting ballots by hand used these machines. The Dominion machines were provided by LHS, the state’s election services contractor. As reported by Berlin selectboard member Carl Parton in an op-ed published this morning, the original memory card was replaced in all Vermont voting machines last month.
This morning, VDC asked SOS to explain the need for the replacement. Spokesperson Eric Covey replied via email that it was to make the job of processing ballots easier:
“There were two reasons for exchanging the first set of memory cards that were sent to the clerks with a replacement set – both to make processing by the clerks easier.
“First – to restructure the format of the results report, such that it would report the results by party, rather than by office. The first memory cards were programmed to report the results by office, and we requested they instead be programmed to report by party. This is the way the clerks report the results into our system, so it made this reporting significantly easier for the clerks. This is the format the results had been reported in previous years – by party.
“Second – we needed a minor adjustment to how the tabulators look for voter markings in the write-in space, to ensure they are capturing all write-ins by voters if they did not fill in the oval by that space, as per Vermont law. This help make the process easier for the clerks and BCA members.”