Staff Writer 

Scarborough Town Clerk Tody Justice said the “integrity of the election was upheld” despite one of seven “Accu-vote” ballot-counting machines suddenly resetting during the general election last Tuesday.

“It has never happened before,” she said. “It was an unfortunate thing to happen, meaning we had to stay up all night.”

The malfunction delayed unofficial voting results, including the town council candidate race, the Scarborough Village proposal and the non-binding “Red Storm” question from being released until noon last Wednesday, approximately 18 hours after polls closed. 

Justice said the machine was counting absentee ballots – the clerk’s office processed 6,500 at four pages apiece – when it’s memory card reset inexplicably. Rather than determining which ballots had been run through the machine and rerunning them, Justice said she opted to start the absentee ballot counting over “from scratch.”

“I made the decision to go back to square one,” she said. “I wanted to make sure voters knew their vote had been counted.”

John Sylvestro, spokesperson for LHS Associates, the vendor behind the “Accu-vote” machines, said one of approximately 60 on-call maintenance workers changed the memory card in the machine to get it running again.

“We have people working in four different states with backup equipment and depending on what the secretary of state allows us to do, can solve most problems,” he said. “That’s what we do, that’s what these towns pay us for.”

Sylvestro said there are approximately 120 machines throughout the state and this year’s presidential election “was a really good day,” referring to limited number of problems.

“We had some service calls, but not many,” he said. 

Scarborough Deputy Finance Director Gina Clukey said the machines – two for each district and one as a backup – were purchased for $38,500 – $5,500 apiece – as part of a bond approved 10 years ago.

Justice said she sees no reason to change vendors, although she is keeping her eye on an effort at the state level that would provide municipalities with the same machines “to keep everyone on the same page.”

“You talk to any town clerk who uses them and they swear by ‘Accu-vote,’” she said. “We’ve had no trouble before, and we still don’t know if it was the machine or just the memory card that malfunctioned.”