System glitch delays election results; Microsoft update may be to blame

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A computer glitch caused a delay in election results at the Isabella County Courthouse Tuesday.

County Clerk Joyce Swan said a glitch was found in the computer program responsible for calculating the tapes and results from each precinct. The same system also combines the ballot results for a grand total.

“We were not expecting this at all,” Swan said. “It isn’t anything that will affect the totals at all.”

Courthouse officials were unable to fix the program and all results were entered into the computer manually.

“That is the backup plan,” Swan said. “We have the option to use either system (manual or electronic entry), so we always have a way to do it.”

Results were expected at about 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, but were relayed to the press and others at about 10:45. The last precinct arrived at the courthouse around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday and the final results were given out at about 2:15 a.m.

No other employees of the County Clerk’s Office were available for comment regarding the technical difficulties.

The computer system was purchased by Isabella County from ElectionSource, a Grand Rapids election software company.

Company President Jeff DeLongchamp said the system is a centralized database designed to count votes in a fast and efficient manner and he was not completely sure what caused the malfunction Tuesday night.

“We’re not exactly sure what happened, but the program would not read the memory packs,” DeLongchamp said.

He said it may have been a simple software update issue and his engineers are working to discover the problem.

“We think it may have a been an issue with a Microsoft update,” DeLongchamp said. “A lot of times these programs were made four or five years ago and if they get an unnecessary update it can have an effect on the system.”

Both DeLongchamp and Swan said the results of the election were not affected by the computer malfunction.

“It’s doesn’t have any barring on the results,” DeLongchamp said. “The canvassing board uses the tapes to verify results anyway, the memory packs are just another way of accumulating vote totals.”

Swan said as of Thursday morning, the board had verified all the results were in and correct.

“Everything was 100 percent,” Swan said.