(Lawrenceburg, Ind.) – Some Dearborn County ballots are yet to be counted as a voting machine was not operating correctly on Election Day.

Forty-four of Dearborn County’s 45 voting precincts have been counted nearly 18 hours after the polls closed. Why? A machine from the Greendale 1 voting precinct was not reading ballots due to a mechanical issue, according to Dearborn County Clerk of Courts Phil Weaver.

“Everything checked out fine during testing three weeks ago.  Our tech support tried different things and finally diagnosed the problem as the data cassette that was okay at testing,” Weaver said. “Tech support has assured us there was nothing anyone did or could have done to the cassette, it just happened.”

With the issue, poll workers placed the ballots into a security bin. The clerk’s staff began counting those ballots by hand on election night and are continuing the hand count Wednesday.

Some Lawrenceburg School Board races cannot be decided yet because of the issue, with more than 500 ballots at that precinct. Final results should be available sometime Wednesday afternoon.

The incident is an example of an advantage Dearborn County has with its voting system, which uses paper ballots. There is always the paper ballot to count no matter what happens, he said.