DuPage County election results delayed by hardware problem

WHEATON, Ill. (WLS) -- A significant computer hardware issue is delaying primary election results in DuPage County.

DuPage County officials confirmed they are collecting voting machines from all 264 polling places and taking them to the central office in Wheaton to complete their vote count.

In a statement, DuPage County Election Commission said, "Despite rigorous pre-election testing of the Ballot Tabulation equipment and tabulation process, certain technical difficulties occurred in closing the precincts, unrelated to the Ballot Tabulation. The Commission utilized its Ballot/Memory Card Transport Procedure to have the security sealed Memory Cards delivered by Bi-Partisan Teams to the County's Central Tabulating Facility. The integrity of the Memory Cards and the Votes casts were never compromised as a result of this delay in uploading the March 20, 2018 General Primary Election results. The Election Commission apologizes for the delay in reporting tonight's election results."

The hardware issue with the end reader cards. The DuPage County Election Commission said that not all of the machines' memory cards will fit into the end readers, so the commission decided to bring all machines with the memory cards still in them to the central office to be tabulated.

The commission said this is a bipartisan effort including escorts by DuPage County deputy sheriffs. The machines have been arriving since about 8:30 p.m. and the commission is continuing to upload results as they are delivered.

The commission said the end reader system was tested extensively prior to the election and no issues occurred.