An employee who has worked several years with Miami County’s touch screen voting machines told the Board of Elections Feb. 11, the machines have “a myriad of problems” and are near the end of their lifespan.

Phil Mote is a seasonal employee who heads up the logic and accuracy testing of each of the county’s voting machines prior to an election.

He said some machines were found in recent testing to jump to another candidate when the person testing would touch the screen. Any machine with that problem was taken out of use, he said.

“Based upon your programming and your testing, are you satisfied that that bug you just described is not present in any of the machines?” board member Jose Lopez said.

“I am because I told them if they ever hit it, let me know … I am not saying it couldn’t happen in the field,” Mote said. If a voter would notice a change in vote and alert an election worker before casting the ballot, they could vote on another machine, and the machine shut down, he said.

Although voters are instructed to check their ballot before submitting it, the board discussed posting at polling places “generic signs” reminding voters to check the ballot. The board agreed to ask the Secretary of State’s Office if the signs would be allowed.

Mote said he thinks the problems being experienced are from the machines’ advancing age.

Eric Morgan, deputy elections director, said he heard at an election directors’ meeting that the recommended age of voting machine replacement is 10 years. Miami County’s machines were bought in 2005 using more than $1 million in federal Help America Vote Act grants.

The board does not have an estimated cost for replacing the more than 350 machines.

Mote told the board he felt the equipment was ready for the March 15 vote. “I feel confident we are going to put on a good election,” he said.

The board also discussed Feb. 11 buying new voter registration software following problems with the current system. Since there isn’t time to buy the new software and install it before the March vote, board members said they wanted representatives of vendor Triad on hand during early voting for the March 15 election to ensure election staff can access voter information needed.

The board asked staff to contact other counties using a proposed new voter registration system by Data Information Management Systems Inc., a company associated with Election Systems and Software.

The first year costs for the system was listed in a letter from DIMS to the board as $55,432 followed in each of the next year by costs in the $30,000-$40,000 range.

Bob Huffman Jr., the board’s liaison with the county commissioners said he would talk with the about the equipment issues before the board’s next week this week.

In other business at its Feb. 11 meeting, the board:

- Approved a 2 percent wage increase for all part-time, full-time and seasonal employees. The increases follow the county commission’s vote in January to increase the county employee salary accounts by 2 percent for the year.

- Agreed to a request from Riverside of Miami County for a demonstration of voting machines for clients.