Shrike

 Public Test of the Tabulator machine this morning.    We must hold a test within 10 days of an election (April 6) and usually do the test on the Monday a week before.  Just in case anything goes wrong we have time to rectify the problem.  Of course, nothing has ever gone wrong... until today.   The tabulator wouldn't  recognize the memory card which contains the ballot information for this election.  We called up Command Central that maintains the machine and issues the memory cards.  They had us go through the same steps as we did before and ended up w/ the same results.   Their conclusion is the cards might be blank and are shipping out new ones to the County Clerk's office immediately.  The Public Test is an official meeting and, if it has to be rescheduled, then a notice must be posted at least 24 hours in advance.  I called the County Clerk's office and explained what happened, told them they should expect the cards coming within two days, and asked about reposting requirements.  The grocery store is a few blocks from the County Offices.  Since I planned on grocery shopping after the test anyway, I swung by the county court house and picked up the new notice for a public test.    On the way home I posted it on the billboard outside of the town hall.   As I said, we've never had a machine failure on a pre-test.    Our Plan B is to count ballots by hand if we can't get the machine error fixed by election day.