April 5, 2024 – Village of Jackson, Wi – The Village of Jackson has issued a statement regarding problems it had with its Dominion voting machines on Election Day, April 2, 2024.
Anastasia Gonstead is the Village clerk. She said the problems occurred in the morning on Election Day, April 2, 2024, at the Village Hall polling location.
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The statement below was issued by the Village of Jackson.
“One of the machine’s had a jam from a ballot we could not reach and a technician had to get into the machine to remove it. Once that occurred that machine was up and running smoothly again. The other machine also had a reoccurring jam, wherein it would not take any ballots in. To err on the side of caution, the technician swapped it out with a replacement machine for the day. The same election cards were used and sealed, as is required. No ballot had been accepted into that machine prior to the equipment changeover.
“We are incredibly thankful our excellent election inspectors identified the problem early on in the day and that Ashley Reichert Washington County Clerk and Washington County have a contract in place with an election equipment servicing company that has a technician available on election days to all Washington County municipalities in the event of something such as this.”
A couple other bullet points from clerk Anastasia Gonstead:
- One of the machine’s had a jam from a ballot we could not reach, and a technician had to get into the machine to remove it. Once that occurred that machine was up and running smoothly again.
- The other machine also had a reoccurring jam, wherein it would not take any ballots in. To err on the side of caution, the technician swapped it out with a replacement machine for the day.
- The same election cards were used and sealed, as is required. No ballot had been accepted into that machine prior to the equipment changeover.
- We are incredibly thankful our excellent election inspectors identified the problem early on in the day and that Ashley Reichert Washington County Clerk and Washington County have a contract in place with an election equipment servicing company that has a technician available on Election Day to all Washington County municipalities in the event of something such as this.
- The incident happened very early on Election Day, very shortly after polls opened.
- One machine, a gentleman had sent a ballot through, and it got jammed in the machinery. The jam was in a part where we could not reach where we would normally be able to troubleshoot. A technician came in, was able to get the ballot out and everything ran through that machine perfectly smoothly the rest of the day.
- The other machine never accepted the ballots that day. It happened around the same time; it kept saying there was a paper jam, and the ballots wouldn’t go in. So luckily, Washington County had the foresight to contract with an election equipment servicing company called Command Central. As part of that they have a technician available to any of the municipalities in Washington County on Election Day, in case of stuff like this coming up. He did come on site. It was not clear right away what the issue was, so we made the call to err on the side of caution, and just replace the machine.
- The election cards get transferred over, sealed on up and everything ran smooth from there on out.
- We tried to be very transparent with anyone who was in that. They the machines have auxilary things in the back that are sealed and locked, and they could put their ballots in there. And we would feed them through the machine once the machines were up and running or if they were more comfortable waiting, they were certainly welcome to do that. Y
- I did my best to provide people the options they had available so voters could make the decision they were most comfortable with given the situation.
- Every election you have an inspector statement. We try to troubleshoot something when they first realized the situation occurred and when it got fixed. Every election has an inspector statement, we document all those steps with the time that happened.
WCI – a copy of that inspector statement has been requested.
WashingtonCountyINsider.com has filed an open records request for the inspector’s report. That will be shared once provided by the Village of Jackson.
This is a working story, and more information will be posted when details are available.
