Big Sky Times

After at least one ballot was found to have a mark within one of the ovals next to a candidate’s name, the Park County Elections Office mounted an investigation.

The elections office was notified of the ballot with the mark by a voter and, after investigating, found other ballots with random splotches of ink, but not necessarily in the ovals themselves, Park County Elections Administrator Maritza Reddington told KULR. 

The voter was given a new ballot. Reddington then contacted Election Systems & Software (ES&S) regarding the issue and was told it was a printing problem. The Montana Secretary of State was also alerted to the problem.

ES&S noted that the problem should have been caught during quality check, but was missed. It issued a statement saying that it was working with the county to fix the issue.

“ES&S wishes to thank the voter who noticed on their absentee ballot an errant speck of toner or ink that inadvertently appeared in an oval,” Lori Mommaerts, an ES&S representative, said in the statement, KULR reported. “These errant specks of ink are a printing error of (an) ES&S partner printer and should have been caught during a quality check before the ballots were delivered to the county. ES&S is working with the county to remedy the situation.” 

ES&S is used in 4,500 local governments across 42 counties and two U.S. territories and makes up more than half of the market share in the voting machine industry. 

There have been many issues with ES&S systems highlighted in recent years, such as machines not recording more than 150,000 votes on the Georgia Lt. Governor race in 2019 and malfunctioning to cause the wrong candidate to be selected in Pennsylvania last December.

ES&S has also made headlines when it sued Cook County, Ill., in 2018 after losing its $30 million contract with the county.