Voting machines that are being used in Michigan and more than two-dozen states around the country today incorrectly tabulates vote counts, according to an election official in Michigan.

An Oct. 24 letter sent to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) by Ruth Johnson, the Oakland County Clerk/Register of Deeds, warned that tabulating software in electronic voting machines has recorded “conflicting” vote counts during testing.

The EAC released Johnson’s letter Monday.

Johnson, a Republican who is up for reelection today, said the M-100 voting machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) used in four communities “reported inconsistent vote totals during their logic and accuracy testing.”

“The same ballots run through the same machines, yielded different results each time,” says the letter addressed to Rosemary Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the Election Assistance Commission. “ES&S determined that the primary issue [that caused the machines to formulate incorrect vote counts] was dust and debris build-up on the sensors inside the M-100″ voting machine. “This has impacted the Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) settings for the two Contact Image Sensors (CIS).”

“This begs the question,” Johnson wrote. “On Election Day, will the record number of ballots going through the remaining tabulators leave even more build-up on the sensors, affecting machines that tested fine just initially? Could this additional build-up on voting tabulators that have not had any preventative maintenance skew vote totals?

“My understanding is that the problem could occur and election workers would have no inkling that ballots are being misread.”

Johnson said the warranties on the ES&S voting machines would be voided if clerks attempted to perform maintenance on the voting machines. The contract Michigan signed with ES&S does not include preventative maintenance. It’s up to each city or township clerk to pay ES&S separately to perform maintenance on the machines.

“ES&S has not performed any preventative maintenance under the state contract, since the machines were delivered three years ago,” Johnson wrote. “I would urge you to investigate whether vote totals could be affected by the failure to provide regular cleaning and preventative maintenance with the ES&S M-100 tabulators.”

Johnson requested “a federal directive or law that would allow county clerks, under the supervision of their bipartisan canvass board, to conduct random audits to test machine accuracy using voting tabulators that have had preventive maintenance within the last year.”

In a statement released Tuesday, Johnson said she not received a response to her request from the EAC and is prepared to do hand recounts in close races today.

A spokesman for the agency said Tuesday he was unfamiliar with Johnson’s letter and could not comment on the matter.

Paul Lehto, a former attorney and election integrity expert who has written several articles on voting issues, said  “a legal infrastructure is required for the fair, nondiscriminatory and uniform system of vote counting to legally exist under Bush v. Gore and the Help America Vote Act.”

“Whether that infrastructure exists or not, will be disputed,” Lehto said. “Attempts have been made by the Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land to eliminate the possibility of hand counts, but courts would have to rule if that was effective or not.”

“It would appear that a competent clerk could find authority to deal with these problems as reported in Oakland county, at least by providing emergency ballots,” Lehto added.

In Oakland County in particular, Lehto pointed to a law that appears to support his assertion that emergency ballots should be used if electronic voting machines failed accuracy tests.

“A board of election commissioners shall not use in an election an electronic voting system that has failed the most recent accuracy test performed on that voting system under this act,” the statute says. “An electronic voting system may be used after any necessary corrections are made and an accuracy test is passed on the system.”

A spokesman for ES&S did not return calls for comment.