The problem can't be fixed before the Nov. 4 election, so Premier Election Solutions and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner are issuing guidelines to counties for how to avoid the problem.

"We will continue to monitor the situation and provide boards of elections with the instruction and support they need to ensure an orderly and efficient election and an accurate count of Ohioans' votes," Brunner said in a memo released yesterday.

Premier, formerly Diebold Election Systems, initially speculated that the problem was a conflict between its system and anti-virus software.

But in a letter Tuesday to Brunner, Premier President David Byrd admitted that further testing showed a source-code error that can cause votes not to be recorded when memory cards are uploaded to computer servers under certain circumstances.

"We are indeed distressed that our previous analysis of this issue was in error," Byrd wrote, adding that notice of the problem is being sent to all Premier customers nationwide.

Brunner is suing to recover the millions of taxpayer dollars spent to buy Premier touch-screens after she said an investigation this year showed that votes in at least nine counties had been dropped in recent elections.

Elections workers discovered the missing votes, but not until many hours later in most cases, Brunner said. The malfunction first was identified in Butler County in April, she said.

Forty-four counties, including Licking and Fairfield in central Ohio, use Premier touch-screens. Franklin County uses touch-screens from a different manufacturer.

Critics of Premier and touch-screen voting in general long have argued that the systems aren't secure and can't be trusted. Brunner herself has advocated moving Ohio toward optically scanned paper ballots.

But Premier spokesman Chris Riggall said the programming problem had gone undetected after years of use and both federal and state testing. He stressed that the systems are secure in conjunction with other election safeguards in place.

Shannon Leininger, president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials and director of the Ashland County Board of Elections -- which uses the Premier touch-screens -- said she's confident that problems can be avoided.

She noted that Brunner has been issuing directives recently dealing with security measures surrounding the election and is expected to address computer server security soon.

"This is something that we will watch very closely," Leininger said.

mniquette@dispatch.com