My county clerk used a grant to purchase the voting machines produced by ES&S. My clerk had made arrangements with other governing bodies in our county to allow them the use of the machines for their elections. The machines must be programmed by the company prior to use and the company is apparently refusing to do the programming for the other entities.

Has anyone else had this problem?

How are you proceeding?

We are in the same boat. ES & S gave me some song and dance about "negotiating with the SOS concerning this issue" - which, when I checked with the SOS, turned out to be a bunch of leftovers from the south end of the north bound male bovine. The attorney I visited with from the SOS office indicated that ES & S had caused multiple problems with the election, and that they were of the opinion that the least the company could / should do was work with us on the city / school / hospital elections.

They were supposed to call me back; as soon as I get a couple of fires put out, I'll check back with them. The attorney was ELizabeth Wren.

I have been told that there is a meeting today at ES&S to deal with this issue and their response. ES&S wants to bill everything through each County Clerk, who does not want to be responsible for the city and school board elections. She has too much on her plate already. Since the cities and schools are just borrowing the machines, ES&S does not want to program the voting machines for "non-customers".

Apparently, ES&S was not aware that Texas, unlike a lot of other states, does not have an election administrator who handles all elections in the county. ES&S has contracts with a lot of counties and wants to deal with those counties only, even though the schools and cities are willing to pay the programming fees for the election.

We also have ES&S equipment. Yesterday our elections administrator met with their representative and the city/ISD/utility districts and they filled out their forms for the ballots at that time and handed to ES&S to prevent us from being the go between. Our administrator will be required to deliver the ballots at the time they are received by us. I still have some concerns about programming, etc. But, we do have an elections office and some staff to help deal with that. Of course, we took that into consideration when determining the lease price for the other entities.

Ann - is there any way to get a copy of the papers that were used? We are still hitting the proverbial wall of bricks........

I will e-mail our contract to you. It is my understanding that the bill for other entities will be mailed to the County but will be in the name of the other entities. We will be the pass through only to deliver the bill to the other entities. And, they are responsible for the programming. Evidentally, that has been worked out.

Ann, Lisa,
Having similar problems.....can one of you email or fax me the info and contracts you are using? PLEASE! We can't get ES&S to call us back, so we don't even have a good estimate of what the programming and other charges will be to include in a contract. Thinking of leaving it open with the city, etc., agreeing to pay the bill once it arrives, in whatever amount it is, in addition to the lease charges for the machine.
Thanks.
Mike Hartman
scurryca@snydertex.com
fax 325 573 1266