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Ohio excess votes blamed on computer glitch Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/10143328.htm?1chttp://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/10143328.htm?1c
Posted on Wed, Nov. 10, 2004
Turnout turns out to be glitch
Cuyahoga vote reports post impossible figures. Computer error blamed
By David Knox
Beacon Journal staff writer
A computer glitch at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections set off false alarms nationwide among Internet watchdogs sniffing for problems in last week's presidential election.
What caught the eye of the suspicious were voter turnout figures posted on the board's official Web site that indicated more ballots were cast than voters registered in 24 of the county's 59 cities, villages and townships. That's a legal impossibility because only registered voters are allowed to cast ballots.
News of the discrepancy quickly spread by Internet bloggers and e-mail. On Monday afternoon, one e-mail went out to nearly 100 reporters at newspapers and magazines across the nation listing the Cuyahoga communities with turnouts greater than 100 percent.
At least one television cable news program on Monday evening -- MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann -- cited the bizarre numbers as an example of ``voting irregularities and possible fraud principally in Ohio and Florida.''
Olbermann also used the numbers satirically in his blog (Web log): ``Talk about successful get-out-the-vote campaigns! What a triumph for democracy in Fairview Park, twelve miles west of downtown Cleveland. Only 13,342 registered voters there, but they cast 18,472 votes.
``Vote early! Vote often!''
Jane Platten, administrator for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said the incorrect turnout totals were caused by a software error that added too many absentee ballots to the turnout totals for many communities.
Platten said officials learned of the problem after about a dozen phone callers asked about the discrepancies, shortly after the turnout numbers were posted.
After the e-mail alert went out on Monday afternoon, inquiries came from ``five to 10 media outlets,'' including the Chicago Tribune and ABC World News Tonight, she said. MSNBC didn't call, she added.
An attempt to explain the problem on the Web site was less than successful, Platten said, ``because it was too difficult for many people to understand.''
The correct turnout numbers were available on the board's Web site -- but buried in a 2,161-page ``canvass'' report tabulating the results precinct by precinct.
Jacqui Maiden, the board's elections coordinator, said the software glitch apparently originated when the board's computer program was last upgraded ``two or three years ago.''
Maiden said the problem wasn't caught because it didn't affect the vote totals for candidates or issues -- only the turnout totals.
She explained that the flawed program incorrectly added the total of absentee ballots cast in a state House District to every community within the district that had an issue in Tuesday's election.
For example, the program accurately reported that 301 of the 558 registered voters in the small village of Woodmere showed up at the polls on Tuesday. The program also correctly reported the vote counts for president -- 258 cast ballots for John Kerry and 40 for George W. Bush -- and for the other candidates and issues.
But in calculating the turnout in Woodmere, the program incorrectly added all 8,553 absentee ballots from the entire state House District 8. The result was an impossible turnout of 8,854 voters or 1,587 percent.
Maiden said the problem wasn't caught last year -- the first time the board posted turnout statistics on the Web -- because the software bug only caused the error in even-numbered years when the board is required to tally ``ballots by congressional, House, and Senate district combinations.''
``We never even saw it,'' she said. ``Now we know something must be done.''
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