Premier Election Solutions, Inc. formerly known as Diebold Election Systems, has changed its tune on how its electronic voting machines managed to drop hundreds of votes in 11 counties in the State of Ohio during the March 2008 primary election. 

Premier originally blamed the problem on McAfee’s anti-virus software, but has now admitted in a letter to the Ohio Secretary of State that it was Premier’s memory cards that uploaded the results to vote-counting servers, which were affected by a logic error in the Premier voting machines’ GEMS source code.

Ohio’s Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, insisted that the voting machines continue to be examined until the real error was uncovered. Many previous tests had not found the logic error until Ohio identified the dropped votes.

Premier’s President, Dave Byrd, sheepishly admitted the mistake by saying, "We now have reason to believe that the logic error in the GEMS code can cause this event when no such antivirus program is installed on the server. We are indeed distressed that our previous analysis of this issue was in error."

Premier has now released a product advisory notice, telling users of its e-voting machines running some versions of the GEMS software how they can avoid lost votes. It is incumbent on volunteer poll workers to check the vote-counting servers to see if all memory cards are shown as uploaded, according to the company.

Premier says they have a fix for the logic error and are testing it. However, unfortunately the fixed version of the software will not be certified by federal officials in time for the U.S. November Presidential election. Almost half of Ohio’s counties rely on Premier’s e-voting machines. Brunner's office says it is working with Ohio counties to identify and prevent the problem from reoccurring in November.

Brunner’s Secretary of State office sued Premier earlier this month, after Premier had tried to avoid responsibility and liability for the error by suing Brunner’s office, claiming that the problem did not violate a warranty or contract. Brunner’s office insisted that Premier had acted fraudulently and breached its warranty in its contracts with the Ohio Board of Elections and local elections. Those two lawsuits have not been resolved.

Brunner’s office had previously issued concerns over “critical security failures” in touch-screen e-voting machines like the ones sold by Premier and two other vendors providing such machines. The Secretary of State recommended that Ohio move away from touch-screen e-voting machines because of their potential vulnerability to hacking in addition to the errors in the software source code.