CLEVELAND -- Problems at the polls during Tuesday's primary election is making people question whether there really were problems with the new electronic voting machines in Cuyahoga County.

According to the county's top election official and a representative from the company that makes the machines, the answer is no.

NewsChannel5's Jack Marshall said the problems at the polls is a tale of two issues, both of which caused a domino effect and a major headache for the voting-machine process in Cuyahoga County.

First of all, electronic optical scanners made by Diebold could not count absentee ballots. But Diebold said it was an issue with the printing of the ballots, not their machines.

Secondly, some precincts have more machines on the blink that those that were working. This was due in part to dozens of Election Day technicians, or EDTs, not showing up on Tuesday.

The EDTs are volunteers trained to fix any problems with the electronic Diebold voting machines.

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and Diebold said the technicians could have prevented the meltdown at several greater Cleveland polling places.

"There is a commitment of the Election Day technicians to come to the polling locations on behalf of the Board of Elections, and when they didn't show up, that, of course, creates a number of domino effects," said Board of Elections Director Michael Vu.

Mark Radke, a spokesman for Diebold, said, "In fact, we went out to some of the precincts to direct some of the poll openings because some people didn't show up. Within two or three minutes with a little direction, people would have had the equipment up and running with no problem at all."

NewsChannel5 is trying to contact the company that printed the absentee paper ballots, MCR in Mayfield Heights, but have so far been unsuccessful.

Vu said he was not surprised that there were some glitches with the new electronic voting system, but he was more disappointed with the absentee-counting problems.

Diebold officials said it had 23,000 electronic voting machines being used across Ohio on Tuesday, and the only problems reported were in a handful of precincts in Cuyahoga County.