KTKA

All of the voting machines have an error that could affect the way your votes are counted.

For the first time in Shawnee County, voters at every precinct will have the choice between paper ballots or touch screen voting.

But no matter how you choose to vote, your ballot will be counted by a machine that has an error.

"There's an incomplete transfer of data from the memory card into the system," said Kathy Rogers, Vice President of Government Affairs for Premier Election Solutions.

Premier makes all of the voting machines in Shawnee County.

Every time a person votes, whether on a paper ballot or on a touch screen, it is recorded on a memory card.

Sometimes, when multiple memory cards are uploaded for results, some of the votes are not counted.

It's called a "sharing violation" and it was first found in Ohio.

It's a problem Shawnee County is more vulnerable to this year because with more voting machines there are more memory cards to upload.

The "sharing violation" is a problem with all the election machines Premier makes, whether in Ohio or in Topeka. So 49 News went to Atlanta to ask some tough questions and get real answers.

In Atlanta, Rogers told me about the ins-and-outs of the glitch, but said she would not even call it a problem.

When asked what she would call the "sharing violation," Rogers said, "It's a logic error within the code that when election officials perform standard operating procedure as they all do, is totally a non-issue."

Rogers says it's a non-issue because election commissioners are always supposed to make sure the number of votes cast matches the number of votes counted.

If those numbers don't match, it means a memory card needs to be re-uploaded.

Essentially, that process extends the amount of time it takes to count votes, but does not cause any votes to be lost.

"Shawnee County voters can go into the polling booth on November 4th, cast their ballot and be assured that their ballot will be counted in the way that they intended for their vote to count," Rogers said. "They can be absolutely assured of that."

Still, the problem remains with the voting machines, even though Premier Election Solutions has figured out how to solve it.

The company just can't put that system in place in time for the election.

"I wish it kind of worked that way, but there's a whole federal certification process that's been in process for many years," Rogers said. "Right now, you're probably looking at about two years to go through that entire process."