Voters in West Virginia have reported encountering 'vote flipping' problems while using digital voting machines to cast their ballot.

Three voters in Putnam County and three voters in neighboring Jackson County told the Charleston Gazette that e-voting machines from Election Systems & Software (ES&S) had switched their votes from a Democratic to a Republican candidate -- or vice-versa.

All three people who complained were able to ultimately switch their votes to the candidates they wanted, said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright.

"There are three checks on it," Waybright said referring to the e-voting machines.

Waybright suggested those voters may have touched the edge of a Republican candidate's button on the screen when attempting to vote for a Democrat. The ES&S screens have the buttons of opposing candidates right next to each other.

"I don't know what happened," Waybright said. "I'm not going to say what the voters reported was inaccurate, but we haven't been able to recreate it."

Meantime, West Virginia's Secretary of State Betty Ireland said in a news conference in Charleston on Wednesday that there were no problems with West Virginia's touchscreen e-voting machines.

"Recent news reports indicated that a handful of voters had difficulty selecting their candidate of choice during the first few days of early voting," Ireland said in a statement.

"However, all voters acknowledged that they were eventually able to select their candidate of choice and cast their ballot accurately. Further, more than 35,000 West Virginians have successfully cast ballots in the early voting process, which started October 15, with only few reported problems."

The county clerks, as well as representatives of Election Systems & Software, the Omaha-based makers of the iVotronic touchscreen machines used throughout the state, inspected the machines and determined that they were working properly, Ireland said, according to Computerworld.

A recent poll conducted by the Opinion Dynamics suggested that 60 percent of those who experienced 'vote flipping' did not rule out the possibility of corruption in the November 4 election.

RB/MMN