by KYW’s Tony Romeo

Problems have cropped up with the voting machines Montgomery County plans to use in the May primary.

Montgomery County’s machines have to be upgraded to comply with new federal law.  The upgraded technology was tested for two days this week in order to be certified by state election officials, but problems were discovered.

Michael Shamos, the certification examiner, says the manufacturer had to make modifications like adding technology for blind voters and then had to update the central tabulation system to accept votes from the all the different equipment the company makes:

"And the central tabulation software has bugs in it and those bugs became evident during the examination."

Shamos says the company will work on the problem with an eye toward more tests in mid-April. 

Montgomery County’s director of voter services believes the problems will be fixed but says in a worst-case scenario, he believes the county can use the machines it has without the upgrade and place one of the company’s models that has been certified in each precinct to comply with the federal law.