“We have had minor problems in the past, but never this kind of trouble,” said voter registrar Peggy Harding. “I just don’t know what’s causing it, whether it’s the age of the machines or other issues. Three machines were recently sent out for cleaning and general maintenance. One of those failed” on Tuesday, she said.

There are eight machines in Lancaster, one for each precinct and one back-up, according to Lancaster County Electoral Board chair Barbara Breeden. Three machines malfunctioned during the vote-counting stage of Tuesday’s election.

Harding said the process of counting votes involves feeding ballots through the $6,000 machine. Once the vote registers, the paper ballot drops into a box below. Poll workers remove the counted ballots, seal them in cardboard boxes and deliver them to Harding’s office. However, when the judges and at least one candidate noticed discrepancies between the number of counted ballots to the number of people voting, they alerted Harding.

At that point the electoral board called the State Board of Elections for permission to open the sealed boxes and hand count ballots, Harding reported. That prompted the state board to contact Election Systems & Software of Texas, the company responsible for servicing voting machines.

A service technician arrived in Lancaster on Thursday to consult with the local programmer. They compared the alignment of the printed ballots but could find no visible errors by the printer, Ben Franklin in Richmond.

The technician was unable to check the machines for other problems because Virginia code requires them to be sealed and quarantined for 30 days after an election in case a recount is necessary.

“Until they can actually get into the machines, we won’t know what’s wrong with them,” Harding noted. She expects the technician to return in January.

“It’s the first time we’ve had this issue,” said Breeden. “We’ll have to get to the bottom of it and work it out before the next election.”