After delay in absentee totals, Boone County clerk in need of new equipment

Boone County Clerk Taylor W. Burks apologized Tuesday for the delay in absentee vote totals.

“We normally report returns between 9 and 11 p.m. and we got final returns in about 10:30 – 10:40 last night. So our first wave wasn’t as fast as we want but our reporting timeline was pretty standard for us,” Burks said.

Burks said the totals were not adding to Election Day votes in their first wave of results Tuesday because of their election software company, Election Systems and Software due to a program issue.

“We’ve been successful in my first three elections with fairly fast returns, but today (Tuesday) was slower,” Burks tweeted.

On Tuesday evening, Burks tweeted on social media they have been using the same election team, the same bipartisan team, the same software and the same equipment for the past decade.

“We have an annual maintenance contract with ES&S and that’s about $50,000. They come in and do preventative maintenance on our machines, provide us a warranty every year for this equipment so that’s about $50,000,” Burks said.

Burks said they pay about $4,000 per election for onsite support in the event troubleshooting is required.

“The tech person reached back to their programmers in Omaha, I believe, and we resolved it within an hour,” Burks said.

ABC 17 News contacted ES&S and has not heard back.