Problems with touchscreen machines slow count
Problems with Alaska's new touchscreen voting machines slowed election returns Tuesday and caused elections officials to hand count and manually upload vote totals from several precincts across the state.
Election officials worked into the early morning hours manually uploading the information from those precincts into the overall election results.
"We've got new technology. Particularly in rural Alaska, we're going from the paper ballot to cutting-edge technology and the entire process is being slowed down," said Division of Elections Director Whitney Brewster.
"I can say there are many systematic problems with Diebold machines that have been identified in many contexts," Brown said. "That there were technical glitches with the machines is not surprising, and it's one indication of the kinds of things that can go wrong with the machines and it's something to be concerned about."
The Diebold electronic voting machines nationwide have been criticized by voter groups and computer scientists who say they are vulnerable to fraud. Diebold has defended the machines, saying they are secure when elections officials follow proper procedures.