Were we lied to?

When the County Board approved the Diebold purchase (I voted nay), we were told that we could only purchase Diebold because they worked with our current systems.

I asked why we could not use a system that is not complimentary with the current one and simply count those separately. There are electronic systems out there that will print an actual ballot - I consider these more safe.

The Outagamie County Clerk told the board that in her county they have more than one system, and that a single system would be better because of efficiency. They spend all night putting together their results and it takes too long.

I asked if thier results are correct, and she said yes, of course they are - even with the different systems.

We were then told by Diebold and our clerks that with thier system, this would not be a problem, because all were in sync. Election results would be instant!

Then we see this:

Vote tabulation continues
Officials in the Winnebago County Clerk's office are still counting votes from Tuesday’s election this morning, but expect to be done tallying votes by noon.

The final results in the election were delayed because of the need to manually enter votes cast on the new touch-screen voting machines.

The touch-screen machines were used for the first time in this election after being purchased in June to bring the county into compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act, which was intended to provide more access to the polls for disabled voters.

The problem stems from the design of the ballot approved by the State Elections Board, which was in a format that was incompatible with the new machines’ vote tabulating system.About 1,200 ballots were cast Tuesday using the new machines.

Clerks assure that the problem is easily remedied and will be corrected in time for the Nov. 7 election.

Will it? We were told the problem would not happen at all...