The ballot for the Republican primary in Kanawha County is vexing Vera McCormick.
The county clerk has gotten election equipment later than usual and has had to deal with more candidates than ever on the Republican ballot.
"It's been stressful," McCormick said Tuesday at the county's voter's registration office.
One of McCormick's biggest problems is that there are more than 200 candidates running for delegate at-large to the Republican National Convention.
The sheer number of candidates is more than the voting machine software can handle.
Electronic Systems and Software, the company that provides the election equipment to the county, had to program the machines specially so that they could process the high number of candidates.
Before this election, the maximum number of candidates the software that displays and reports election results could handle was 200. For this election, Electronic Systems and Software had to create a "patch," or new program, that could process the results of the at-large Republican National Convention race.
It then tested the system with the Federal Elections Commission, and at the state level, to make sure it works.
The software upgrade and testing costs money, but Elections Systems and Software is absorbing the cost and is installing the upgrade for free.
Even without having to pay for the software upgrade, this election is still expected to cost the county a lot, because the Republican ballot is three pages long.
McCormick would not give an estimate of the cost, but County Commission President Kent Carper said it likely is to be $4,000 to $5,000 more this year.
"It's going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money," Carper said. "It already has."
The software came in Monday, a day before testing and a little more than a week before early voting begins.
In the last presidential election, the Republican ballot was two pages long.
The larger Republican ballot has some people speculating that there will be long lines at the polls. Not only will the machines have to process three pages of ballots, the voters will have to filter though three pages to make their selections. If they mark more than the 22 candidates they are allotted in the at-large Republican National Convention race, they have a chance to fill out a new ballot but would have to start over.
McCormick doesn't think there will be problems, as long as people get to the polls by 7:30 p.m., which would give them a card that says they can vote.
"I don't look for any problems with this," McCormick said. "As long as the voter knows that there's three pages."
During machine testing on Tuesday, one voting machine did not work because its personal counting card, the device that tabulates the votes, wasn't programmed correctly. The county will retest the machine Wednesday.
Reach Daniel Desrochers at dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter.