Great Bend ? A problem with a machine that scans ballots kept Barton County voters in suspense about the outcome of local elections for an extra day.

Election workers discovered problems with the optical ballot scanner shortly after the polls closed Tuesday. The machine, which the county bought in 1986, showed an “overload error” when it was fed advanced-voting ballots.

“It would not combine advanced ballots into one precinct,” Barton County Clerk Donna Zimmerman said. “We thought at first it was a machine malfunction.”

The problems came as a surprise because the scanner had been tested three times Aug. 2 and again Tuesday morning, Zimmerman said.

“It ran beautifully,” she said. “We didn’t just turn it on all of a sudden on election night and find out it wouldn’t run.”