HUNTINGTON -- The Cabell County Commission certified May's primary results on Thursday, but Wayne County totals have yet to be certified amid concerns raised about voting machine inaccuracies.

The iVotronic Touch-Screen Voting System has come under fire from some Wayne County residents who said the county's voting machines malfunctioned during the May 13 election. Wayne County Clerk Bob Pasley said the Wayne County Commission has concerns with the voting machine inaccuracies and the performance of the hand-count.

Both Pasley and Cabell County Clerk Karen Cole said they plan to address the hardware concerns with the iVotronic vendors at the annual county clerk convention in June. Simply expressing their concerns to the Secretary of State's Office will not aid the clerks and their staff on election day, Cole said.

"The Secretary of State's Office and the vendors don't use the system like how our voter registration staffs do," she said. "The people to have to deal with the machines need a voice."

In both Wayne and Cabell counties, printers attached to the voting machines caused problems. Several of the printers jammed, causing certain votes to be counted and digitally saved, but not displayed on the paper receipt, Pasley said. Machines in about eight to 10 voting precincts had paper jams. Voting machines in some Cabell County precincts experienced similar problems, Cole said.

In addition, Wayne County Commissioner Rick Wellman has filed a complaint with the Secretary of State's Office claiming that the county's touch-screen voting machines malfunctioned during the primary election. Last week, he cited affidavits from voters saying they had difficulty getting the machine to register the candidate they intended to vote for.

Wellman declined to comment this week on the filed complaint, the election results or their certification.

According to the Wayne County Clerk's Office, the election results are scheduled to be declared at the next commission meeting on June 5. After the vote totals are declared, candidates have 48 hours to request a recount. If no request is made in the time limit, the Board of Canvassers will meet again and certify the results.

Pasley said minor problems arose during the hand-count after the results were canvassed. Counters forgot to include early voting and absentee ballots when they counted the election totals in one precinct. But the mistake was caught and the hand-counted numbers matched the electronically recorded totals, Pasley said.

Despite the problems with the machines, Pasley and Cole have said they are confident in the machines' accuracy.

"We've had no more problems with these machines than we've had with the mechanical machines and other machines in the past," Pasley said. "We just have some general concerns."

Counting process

While voting methods have evolved from paper and pencil ballots to electronic voting machines in Cabell County, election officials said the counting process has barely changed over time.

Jason Williams, manager of the Secretary of State's Election Division, said the process for tabulating the ballots has remained the same in Cabell County throughout the different implementations of voting systems.

Once ballots are cast, they go to a central ballot counting center in the Cabell County Courthouse and run through the electronic vote counters. Though current voting systems tabulate the votes electronically, a portion of the ballots are still hand-counted to help ensure the integrity and accuracy of the machines, Williams said.

A team of counters, consisting of a pair of Democrats and Republicans, hand-counts every vote cast for every candidate in four randomly-selected voting precincts. Their counts must come within 1 percent of the total number of ballots for the precincts on election night. This process ensures vote totals are correct.

The Board of Canvassers, consisting of Cabell County Commissioners Bob Bailey, Scott Bias and Nancy Cartmill, go over provisional ballots. Those are ballots not initially counted because of questions about a voter's eligibility to vote. Following the board's decision to accept or reject the ballots, it is up to Cabell County Clerk's staff to record the ballot decisions and merge them with the original election night totals.

Precinct returns

Typically, Cole has released precinct-by-precinct numbers the day after the election, but she intended this year to withhold the numbers until the county commission certified the results. The reason was to protect the privacy of provisional voters, whose ballots were reviewed by the county commission.

State law stipulates that anyone who requests the precinct-by-precinct numbers before the vote certification can see the detailed choices of provisional voters. When the numbers are withheld until after their certification, the detailed information of provisional voters are merged in with election night results and are no longer public record.

"Our goal is always to protect the privacy of the voters but the current state law doesn't allow for that," Cole said. "Either the law needs to be changed and provisional voters names are not public information or we don't release the results until after they are certified."

Since there were no precincts with just one provisional voter, Cole said she decided to give out the precinct-by-precinct numbers this year before their certification.

The idea to withhold the numbers came after county clerks from across the state, including Cole, raised concerns about the privacy issue. She also plans to address the privacy issue at the annual county clerks convention in the summer.

For the past few elections Cabell County has used the iVotronic Touch Screen Voting System. Cabell was the first county in the state to implement the machines.

Cabell County has gone through a number of different voting systems before finally deciding on the iVotronic voting system.

With new technology emerging, the county chose to use an optical scan (paper and pencil) ballot in the 2000 primary election. After having major issues with that ballot, the county switched to the Votronic Touch Screen Voting System, an older version of the current iVotronic system, for the 2000 general election.

In 2006, in accordance with the national Help America Vote Act of 2002, printers were added to the machines to aid handicapped voters. Now, 33 counties, including Cabell and Wayne County, use the iVotronic voting system.