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USA's Biggest Voting Machine Company Demands Removal of Web Page:
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Ballots printed incorrectly, programming errors miscount the votes; elections overturned...but only if you find the error
Thirty-one city newspapers have documented voting errors that only add to the ballot-stuffing, dead-people-voting, hide-the-ballots-in-your-trunk, absentee-faking problems of the past. The rush to computerized counting, and the consolidation of the "voting machine industry" into just three major players, who try to keep identities secret, fail to mention conflicts of interest, and shrug off criminal records has added new worries about the security of our voting process. Go straight to the reports
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2002 in Dallas: ES&S counted Democratic votes as Republican...
http://www.dallasnews.com — Article is Oct 23, put "votes miscounted" in search box
COUNTY DEMOCRATS SAY EARLY VOTES MISCOUNTED
10/23/2002
The Dallas Morning News
"Dallas County Democrats asked a state district court judge to shut down early voting Tuesday because some touch-screen ballot machines hadn't accurately recorded votes.
"But Democratic leaders opted later to delay a court hearing, agreeing to meet Wednesday with county elections officials and representatives of the Nebraska-based ballot machine manufacturer for an explanation...The Democrats said they received several dozen complaints Monday and Tuesday from people who said that they selected a Democratic candidate but that their vote appeared beside the name of a Republican on the screen. They also said some votes cast for Republicans were counted for Democrats.
"Problems were reported in seven or eight of the 24 early voting locations, and 18 machines were taken out of service, said Bruce Sherbet, county elections administrator. Affected races included the hotly contested U.S. Senate race between Republican John Cornyn and Democrat Ron Kirk, the former Dallas mayor.
"Democratic officials said they didn't know how many votes might have been inaccurately recorded. No problems were reported in other counties.
"'We don't know if we lost 10 votes, 100 votes, 1,000 or 10,000,' said Susan Hays, chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party ... The touch-screen machines - made by Election Systems & Software - have been used in more than 90 Dallas County elections in the past four years and have an outstanding record overall, Mr. Sherbet said. [NOTE: EXCEPT WHEN THEY LOST 41,000 VOTES IN DALLAS AREA RECENTLY — keep reading.]
"...Ms. Hays said it appears that the problem was with the voting equipment, not county elections personnel. "This is a vendor's problem," she said. "They need to prove to us that voters' votes are being cast as they want."
"...Some voters who wanted to vote a straight Democratic Party ticket instead had votes assigned to all Republican candidates, the court filing says. ... Voter Kate Kettles told The Associated Press that she tried to vote for all Democratic candidates but that the computer highlighted Republicans all the way down the ballot. She said that an election official moved her to another machine but that it took several tries to get the correct candidates selected.
"'It's the fact that I'm having to make a serious effort that is really disconcerting,' Ms. Kettles said." ==================== Among the programming errors reported by city newspapers: Automatically forgetting to count 41,000 votes; misprinting ballots designed for minorities, rendering them unreadable; machines counting 25% more votes than voters, and computerized counters that inexplicably reverse the tallies.
Problem is, the messes caused by these voting machine errors — and these are just the ones that were discovered — might get a yawn when you read about only one in a hometown paper. Just a bit of bumbling. Now read the three dozen examples below, and see if you still want to shrug. Compiled together, they reveal genuine security flaws in our voting system.
The companies that make the voting machines cite accuracy of 99 percent or better in their sales presentations, but have admitted to errors of 20 percent or more when caught. Most errors are discovered by local elections officials or candidates who are alarmed by discrepancies. Sometimes, a lone patriotic voter will spot the error and make noise until someone does something. More often, no one does anything.
No one knows how many large errors go undetected, or how many errors are ignored because no one did anything about a complaint. In many cases, review of election results can only be accomplished if people who already hold a political office agree to it. And nowadays, almost always, local officials can't arrange for independent investigations — they must call the company that sold the machines. Only the company's own expert is allowed to work with their proprietary software.
The most basic process in democracy — voting — begins with the mechanism we use: the ballots, the machines that register the votes, and the computer code that counts the votes. Nowadays, all three steps are controlled by just a handful of private individuals, who own the handful of companies that make ballots, machines and computer counting codes.
In the newspaper reports that follow, you'll see that the companies who make voting machines often admit to creating the errors. The ballot-making and vote-counting errors can (and do) swing elections. This article compiles a list of documented election errors and describes who they benefited and what steps were taken to resolve them. It illustrates that candidates and voters are currently put at risk by nondisclosure and "private" counting codes that citizens cannot review, and candidates cannot appeal.
Would voting machine companies deliberately do anything wrong? They have access; many have conflicts of interest, and they often admit to "programming errors" (when caught). They do not allow independent investigators access to their counting codes. It only takes one person to implement programming mischief.
Three of the four major voting machine companies, listed below, have had key people entangled in criminal prosecutions. At least one company was financed by a right-wing political activist credited with putting over two dozen conservatives in the legislature; one company has an owner who is current campaign treasurer for Republican senator Chuck Hagel. And the Republican senator himself was, at one time, the head of the voting machine company that counted his own election.
As you will see, local citizens and your county election board cannot look for the cause of the problem — they must call in representatives of the voting machine companies to tell them why all the Spanish ballots had the translation garbled, or why the machine counted 20 percent of the votes incorrectly.
What kinds of glitches are being reported? Which candidates tend to benefit, if nobody catches the error? Are the problems caused by fraud or human error?
First, a look at the companies that make the ballots, machines and vote-counting software:
Just a handful of companies, with interlaced products and people
Election Systems & Software (ES&S), the largest company. Founded by brothers Todd and Bob Urosevich. Originally financed by the right-wing political activist Ahmanson family. One owner, Michael McCarthy, is the campaign treasurer for a Republican Senator. An ES&S vice president, Tom Eschberger took a deal for immunity in a bribery prosecution. Founder Todd Urosevich is currently vice president.
Sequoia Pacific: Shares technology with ES&S — (When ES&S acquired Business Records Corp., the software and systems for BRC were put under a shared licensing agreement between Sequoia and ES&S.) One of Sequoia's people was entangled in a Louisiana bribery scheme.
Global Election Systems: Now part of Diebold. The head of the company is ES&S founder Bob Urosevich, brother of ES&S' current vice president, Todd Urosevich. Bob declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy, then bought an expensive house, then moved to Texas and became president of Global Election Systems, which was recently acquired by Diebold, who retained Urosevich.
Shoup Voting Solutions, Inc.: One of the original players, now its machines and personnel are merged into the other major companies. A jury found owner Ransom F. Shoup II guilty of obstruction of justice.
Newspaper Reports of Election Errors
Nov 1997
Arizona Daily Star
Size of error: 20%
Type of error:
- A set of precincts had ballots whose chads would not dislodge at all
Who benefited: Republican candidate
Reason for error: The former head of elections for Pima County was called in to investigate. He concluded the problem was with the ballots themselves. Business Products Corp. (became ES&S and Sequoia), who made the ballots, disagreed, but offered no explanation.
Nov 1998
Dallas Morning News
Voting machine company: ES&S
Size of error: 10%
Type of error:
- Over 41,000 votes were not counted due to computer programming errors
Who benefited: Republican candidate
Resolution of problem:
- A recount was done and ES&S took the blame. They said it was a series of computer errors that included:
(1) running a test on 98 precincts and the computer wouldn't count them because its programming said it already had counted them
(2) failing to add the absentee votes and
(3) another computer programming error that affected the readout of 200-500 votes.
Change in results: Yes. Democrat picked up over 1,000 votes. Not quite enough to overturn the election.
Areas of concern for future election security:
- The article notes that Dallas is beginning to use paperless touch-screen machines, which will make meaningful recount impossible.
- The 91 precincts omitted were the ones with voting trends that leaned Democratic.
2/3/1999
Honolulu Star Bulletin
[Full Story]
Senate President Norman Mizuguchi was expected to announce details today of a Senate investigation into last year's election and the malfunction of ballot-counting machines in seven precincts.
"This is what the United States is all about, and the people's right to vote and having this particular process free from any kind of irregularities is very important," Mizuguchi said.
Sen. Colleen Hanabusa (D, Waianae), who is expected to be a leader of the investigation, said she wants answers about how decisions were made about the election process.
"How did they manage to turn off the safeguards?" she asked...Late yesterday afternoon, Hanabusa met with officials from Election Systems & Software, which supplied the election machines and computers.
Other states have had problems with equipment from the company Election Systems & Software:
In Dallas, which uses the same precinct ballot-counting machine as Hawaii, 41,015 votes were initially missed.
Several counties in Maryland that had used the company's machines for previous elections had problems with ballots that were improperly printed.
[Our note: ES&S acknowledged the error and paid for the recount. It was expensive; vice president Todd Urosevich said it cost ES&S over $250,000, but that the biggest expense was the hand counting. He implied that it would have saved ES&S a lot of money if they could just do a machine recount, giving voice to the financial incentive for voting machine companies to encourage eliminating paper ballots.]
Sep 1998
Albuquerque Journal
Group affected: Hispanic voters
Voting Machine Company: Global Election Systems
Size of error: 50,000 ballots
Type of error:
- A computer glitch jumbled the Spanish on 50,000 absentee ballots
- Some voters received two ballots, but if they voted on both of them their votes would be invalidated
- An extra information sheet was sent along with the ballot; some voters were sent both ballots
Result: Added elements of confusion for Hispanic ethnic group
Resolution: The voting machine company, Global Election Systems admitted responsibility for the error.
June 7, 2000
Honolulu Star Bulletin
[Full Story]
FIRM ADMITS ERRORS IN COUNTING VOTES FOR HAWAII, VENEZUELA
ES&S has felt the most fallout from its problems in Venezuela, where that nation's highest court suspended the May 28 elections because of technical glitches in the cards used to tabulate votes.
Dozens of protesters have chanted "Gringos get out!" at ES&S technicians working in Venezuela's election offices. The U.S. Embassy in Caracas has protested the treatment by secret police of ES&S personnel, including alleged verbal and physical abuse and threats.
Venezuela sent an air force jet to Omaha to fetch computers and experts in a last-ditch effort to fix the problem before the delay was ordered.
Venezuela's president and the head of the nation's election board accused ES&S of trying to destabilize the country's electoral process. ES&S denied that, saying 11,200 changes by election officials in posting thousands of candidates for 6,200 offices were hindering the firm's work.
08/22/2002
Wichita Eagle (KS)
ELECTION REVERSED IN CLAY COUNTY
The discovery of a computer glitch reversed one outcome from this month's primary elections in Kansas, and an unsuccessful candidate in another race has based his request for a special election on alleged technical difficulties.
In Clay County, computer results from a County Commission primary showed challenger Roy Jennings defeating incumbent Jerry Mayo by 22 votes The hand recount, completed Tuesday, revealed Mayo as the winner -- and by a landslide, 540 votes to 175.
In one ward, which Mayo carried 242-78, the computer had mistakenly reversed the totals. And in the absentee voting, which originally showed a 47-44 edge for Jennings, a hand count found Mayo winning 72-19.
Nov 1990
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
And
Seattle Times
Race affected: State Representative.
Size of error: More than 3.5% of 400,000 votes
Type of Error:
- Ballots cast but not counted
- Ballots counted but not cast
- Some Democratic candidates had fewer votes in later returns than they'd had in earlier returns. In the 32nd District Sen. Al Williams, D-Seattle, had 90 more votes in an election-night printout than he had on a printout the following day. At the same time, Williams' unsuccessful Republican opponent, Tom Tangen, gained 32 votes.
- At one point several hundred ballots that were added to the returns in the 45th District but didn't result in any increase in the number of votes
- Later, the number of votes added to the totals for legislative candidates appeared to exceed the number of additional ballots tabulated
- Although Betrozoff (R) won only 52.4 percent of absentee ballots counted earlier, he won 56.8 percent of the 2,500 absentees counted last Friday.
- Subsequent review uncovered a total of 14,000 uncounted votes
Who would have benefited if error not detected: Republican candidate
Resolution: King County's election manager recommended a countywide recount. The election-count problem lay, officials said, in three computer card readers which counted ballots cast but didn't register the individual votes contained on the ballots. "It appears it was sporadic. It missed some things but not everything," election officials said.
Election security issues: Areas of concern for future elections —
- Discrepancies would probably have gone unnoticed except that a Democratic letter of complaint reached a public official who was responsive.
- Small discrepancies turned into large discrepancies when further examined
02/18/2000
THE RECORD, Northern New Jersey
About 75 percent of the voting machines in the city of Passaic failed to work when the polls opened on Election Day, forcing an undetermined number of voters to use paper ballots during the morning hours.
An independent consultant who later examined the machines concluded the problem was due to sabotage, which has led a Democratic freeholder to refer the matter to the FBI.
11/14/2000
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
City Councilwoman Valerie McDonald yesterday called for an investigation of voting machine irregularities at polling places in Lincoln-Lemington, Homewood and the East Hills last week, saying machines in the city's 12th and 13th wards and other predominantly black neighborhoods were malfunctioning for much of Election Day.
McDonald said both machines at a Lincoln-Lemington polling place were out of service for the first three hours, driving away 50 voters. Several machines were in and out of service at 13th Ward polling places in Homewood and East Hills, smoking and spitting out jammed and crumpled paper and leaving poll workers to wait hours for repair by Allegheny County elections division workers.
Workers in the polling places "strongly felt that the machines were intentionally programmed incorrectly ... and were sabotaged," McDonald said in a letter to Elections Director Mark Wolosik. Dec 1994
The Arizona Daily Star
Error rate was 66 percent.
- More than 800 votes in one Oro Valley precinct went uncounted and still were unaccounted for a month after the election
- 674 votes cast in the Catalina Foothills School District bond election came from voters living in the city of Tucson. That disturbed school district officials because the district does not extend into the city.
No recount appears to have been done, even though two-thirds of voters did not get their votes counted.
Elections official said the improper reporting was the result of a faulty computer program
Concerns for security of future elections:
- The Board of Supervisors approved the election canvass Nov. 15 without detecting the problem.
- No recount done despite large discrepancies
- No record that the "computer glitch" was ever identified or corrected
April 1996
Associated Press - WACO, Texas
Hundreds of votes in McLennan County's Republican primary runoff were miscounted because of a malfunctioning ballot-counting machine or a computer glitch.
Type of error:
- Officials told the Waco Tribune-Herald that they did not know the exact number of ballots affected. "We're trying to solve the mystery," said McLennan County Elections Administrator Linda Lewis.
- A Republican source told the newspaper that in one precinct, about 800 votes were tallied, although only 500 ballots had been ordered.
- The miscounted votes were scattered throughout the precincts with no one area being miscounted more than another.
- The machine may have counted some ballots more than once, almost doubling the number of votes actually cast.
Nov 1996
The Daily Oklahoman
Race affected: State and county final election
Type of error:
- Computer hardware refused to read votes from 257 precincts
- Two close races, but hand count wasn't done
- Waited for a technician to install new hardware; Lost the precinct-by-precinct counts.
- Despite pre-tests, computers failed on election night
- Reliance on programmers to fix problem, no manual auditing
Nov 1997
Akron Beacon Journal and Newsbytes News Network
Type of error: Votes miscounted by computer
Resolution of problem: Found programming error and then recounted the votes
Uh-oh: This reversed the results and overturned the election
April 1998
Newsbytes News Network
Type of election: School Bond
Type of error: Transposed results; programmer reversed the "yes" and "no" answers in the software used to count the votes
Explanation of error: Registrar Rosalyn Lever. "It was an error, and we're sorry. The programmer transposed the counting.
Here's why you don't get rid of paper ballots:
How error was discovered: The error was discovered because California had a law requiring a random sampling of votes by hand.
June 1998
Salt Lake Tribune
Type of election: Republican Primary
Type of error:
- Automated vote counting ran the absentee ballots but didn't add them to the total
Explanation of problem: It was determined that the program refused to merge the regular ballots with absentee ballots, which, when counted, swung the race in Callaghan's favor.
July 1998
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Type of election: Primary contest, Republicans, a "liberal Republican" vs. a "conservative Republican"
Type of error:
- Results were delayed when a computer glitch caused votes for Sharon Cooper, the liberal Republican candidate, not to register. She was running against conservative Republican Richard Daniel.
Resolution of problem: The problem required an on-the-spot reprogramming, which delayed counting several hours.
Concerns for election security:
- on the spot reprogramming opens the door for tampering that cannot be detected
- If no paper trail, all votes for Sharon Cooper would have been lost.
August 1998
The Commercial Appeal Memphis, TN
Type of election: Gubernatorial Primary; Republican Shirley Beck-Vosse vs. incumbent Gov Don Sundquist;
Type of error: Computer snafu temporarily stopped the Shelby County vote count Thursday night after generating wildly inaccurate results
- Forced a second count that had election workers drive to the downtown election commission office to bring computer cartridges containing the 295 individual precinct results. The results were supposed to have been counted at remote locations.
- The system that was shut down was posting the incorrect results to newsrooms across the city that have computer links to the data. At least one television station broadcast the bogus results.
- Votes went to the wrong candidates
Concerns for future election security:
- "This system should have been checked, and it should have been known that the scanner couldn't read the cartridges
- Why were newspaper and TV hooked directly up to voting machines before counting was completed?
- Short circuiting election procedures by having vote-counting centralized
Nov 1986
The Atlanta Journal - The Atlanta Constitution
Type of election: State Senator
Type of error:
- Computer glitch resulted in miscounted votes and
- The old fashioned method...Box of ballots hidden in trunk of Republican election official's car
- Poll workers insisted more votes were cast than the counts showed; a recount was done
Resulted in: Undercount of votes for Democratic Senator. Republican challenger was declared the winner by 98 votes. After a recount, the election was overturned and the Democrat won.
No one explained, no one apologized, he reports.
Concerns for future election security:
- Recount done in private
- No consequences for vote fraud
Oct 1998
Orlando Sentinel
Voting machine company: Global Elections Systems
Size of error: 1200 ballots. Then turned out to be 71,200 ballots.
Type of error:
- Computer error caused printing error on the ballots, changing the wording and paragraphs on the ballot, and also making the lines fail to match up to the votes.
- Also affected 70,000 ballots for voting booths, but error was caught in time
What was affected: Proposed revisions to the state constitution
Explanation of problem:
- A computer problem occurred in one location, and was said to affect the disk that was sent to the printers in such a way that other locations were also affected.(?)
- Elections officials opinion was that the computer error was caused by advice given by a technician when the ballots were being prepared.
- Global Election Systems took responsibility for the errors, reprinted the ballots, and a new batch was mailed.
How error was discovered:
A voter's wife pointed it out, but not until her husband had already voted.
Concerns for future election security:
About 1,200 voters got two ballots with an explanation that the first one was flawed. If they had already sent the first one in, and then revoted on the correct one, their votes did not count.
Oct 1998
The San Francisco Chronicle
Size of error: 100,000 absentee ballots Type of error:
- Absentee ballots had Chinese translation, but the translation omitted six candidates, including Mabel Teng, the Chinese frontrunner.
- All of the candidates omitted were minorities.
- An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 voters read only Chinese, and the election races were expected to have margins as small as a few votes.
Explanation for problem:
- Elections Department spokesman Paul Manfuso said Teng had been asked twice and refused to have her name printed in Chinese. (Uh, why would she do that?)
- No explanation was published for the omission of the other five candidates.
- Elections officers determined that it was the candidates' faults.
- The candidates denied that they had been contacted
Nov 1998
Chicago Daily Herald
Size of error: 25 percent
Type of error:
- 108 of 403 precincts stopped counting. Cumulative totals for the judge retention question stopped after 295 precincts were counted.
Who benefited: Democrats fought for recount, Republicans resisted.
Explanation of error:
- One pin from the cable connecting the ballot reader to the computer that tabulates the results apparently bent, causing votes in judicial retention questions not to be counted.
Resolution of error:
- Democrats requested recount of all 108 precincts; Republicans and voting officials insisted that only the judge retention questions should be recounted.
- Recount was disallowed.
11/11/1998
The Arizona Daily Star
Size of error: 9,675 votes in a tight race
Voting machine company: Global Election Systems
Type of error:
- For the third time in as many elections, a computer glitch has caused problems with the vote count.
- Elections Director Mitch Etter said that he had known since the morning after the election that some votes were missed but withheld that information from the Arizona Secretary of State's Office and the news media while trying to determine how big the problem was and what went wrong.
- Etter said a routine audit the morning after the election showed no votes were recorded for 24 precincts scattered around the county, even though voter rolls indicated thousands had voted at those polling places.
Explanation for problem:
- Global Elections Systems, the company that supplied the voting system, is trying to figure out why the county's central computer showed it had received vote totals from those precincts but failed to record the votes.
Previous problems:
- Programming error in 1996 that resulted in votes being credited to the wrong candidate
- Computer malfunction in 1994 that erased 826 votes in one precinct and caused other discrepancies.
- The city also had to hand-count 79,000 votes in 1997 because of a manufacturing defect in the computer punch-card ballots.
11/04/1999
The Baltimore Sun
What company was involved: Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment Inc.
What happened: Counting was delayed.
Explanation for the error:
Sequoia officials say the system failed. Each of the city's 989 balloting machines had a cartridge to record votes. When polls closed, police officers were to take those cartridges to the city Board of Supervisors of Elections.
The cartridges were plugged into an election board computer, which electronically read them. Sequoia was supposed to update the software, but didn't.
Company officials tested the computer's ability to read ballot results that were input by hand, but no one tested the computer's ability to read cartridges electronically.
Because the system was not tested, the company did not realize the computer software needed to be updated.
Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment Inc. the manufacturer of Baltimore's $6.5 million voting system took responsibility for the computer failures. Phil Foster from Sequoia [later implicated in Louisiana bribery scandal], said that his company failed to update the software correctly.
04/22/1999
Newsbytes News Network
A new computer system gave the wrong election results to news media earlier this month. The race involved the position of town clerk in Port Washington, Wisconsin. Election results shown on the county clerk's computer monitor on the night of the election were incorrect. The initial results showed that Renea Krueger had won the election with 126 votes, and her opponent, Susan Westerbeke, received 18 votes. In reality, Westerbeke won the election with 182 votes. According to Harold Dobberpuhl, Ozaukee County Clerk, the results displayed on the computer monitor were not the official results reported by the county clerk office...The system receives information from a modem, but also requires some manual entry. The error occurred when the person inputing the information simply dropped the digit "2."
06/04/1999
Newsbytes News Network
A grand jury last week concluded that a computerized counting system miscalculated the votes for three propositions in Stanislaus County, California last November. A hand recount of the ballots resulted in one state proposition's result being reversed. Measure A, an issue involving binding arbitration for police and fire unions, was originally reported as losing badly, but in reality it won.
According to Karen Matthews, county clerk recorder and registrar of voters, the problem occurred because of a programming error in the counting system produced by Elections Systems and Software. Stanislaus County used the system on a trial basis in the June primary and November election while it considered buying it. Happened with ES&S system. "I don't believe that any amount of testing could have discovered the problem," said Matthews. Stanislaus County opted not to buy the ESS counting system, staying with the punch-card system it has used for 15 years.
09/30/1999
Buffalo News
WERE IT ANY other place, you might believe it was just a computer glitch. Some inexplicable byte malfunction. What makes the story hard to swallow is this isn't just any place. It's the Erie County Board of Elections. In theory, the Board of Elections is there to serve. To ease the way to Election Day for any candidate. In reality, it's a patronage pit...Sue McCartney is running for Common Council on three minor-party lines. She finished a close second in the Democratic primary to the party-endorsed candidate. She's bright and has the energy of a horde of hamsters...McCartney asked the Board of Elections two weeks ago for a voter list in her Niagara District. After eight days -- a lifetime, with Election Day just seven weeks away -- she got a computer disk with the names and addresses. She was about to mail thousands of fliers when a volunteer, just for fun, looked up his own name on the list. And noticed his house number was wrong. He wasn't alone. As they soon discovered, every house number on the list was wrong.
McCartney has no illusions. She has "no doubt" there was no computer glitch. "The idea is to discourage (unendorsed) candidates," she said, "and derail your time line. Every day is so critical." Board of Elections officials, predictably, disavowed any bad intent. "It was a computer glitch, I have no idea why it happened," said Eric Hucksoll, secretary to Democratic Elections Commissioner Larry Adamczyk. "It's the first time I've ever seen something like that."
One more thing. When a McCartney volunteer went to the board to complain, Hucksoll made a computer disk with the correct addresses in five minutes. No mistakes, no eight-day wait. "I had the original backup file and used that," explained Hucksoll. If he got the right addresses from the original file the second time, what happened the first time? "I'm still looking into that," he replied.
02/10/2000
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
A computer glitch, caused by a power surge at the polls, resulted in incorrect tallies Tuesday night. Elections supervisor Bob Sweat counted the votes by hand Tuesday night and again Wednesday.
03/05/2000
The Commercial Appeal Memphis, TN
Computer problems stopped and then slowed balloting at all 19 of the county's early voting sites Saturday afternoon, forcing the Election Commission to ship in supplies of paper ballots for voters or tell them to come back later.
03/09/2000
The Orange County Register
Vote counting ground to a halt for an hour late Tuesday night because of about 4,000 flawed ballots, Orange County Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever said Wednesday.
The ballots contained incorrect "punch IDs," punched holes at the bottom of the ballot that tell automated counters the voter's party affiliation, where the ballot was cast and which contests are on the card.
Lever said all the improperly punched ballots were prepared for independent voters in Newport Beach and Irvine. The flaw affected just the B card, on which voters marked their choices for U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, the state Senate and the state Assembly.
05/23/2000
EFE News Service
Caracas, May 23 (EFE).- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has asked the United States to help fix a computer software glitch that threatens to disrupt the May 28 general elections.
"This is very strange," Chavez said, referring to the computer problem that prevented election officials from accessing the computer program that runs the complex electoral process.
The problem was discovered by two U.S. technicians working for Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), which supplied the system to be used in next Sunday's elections.
"After working for four or five hours into the early morning, they haven't been able to open the program and that's very serious. That's why I called the U.S. ambassador, John Maisto, at 5:30 a.m. (0930 GMT) to officially ask his government to do what needs to be done with that company and to make the decisions that need to be made," Chavez told Radio Caracas Television.
Although ES&S is ultimately responsible for solving the problem, Chavez said he asked for direct U.S. government involvement because the United States recommended the company.
11/08/2000
AP Online
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - A computer glitch in a New Mexico county led officials to withhold about 60,000 early-voting and absentee ballots from their vote count. The presidential race in New Mexico was tight, and the problem in Bernalillo County prevented news organizations from declaring a winner.
"The official line at this point is that there's a problem with their database. Their (voting) machines have a problem in the database," Lamb said, "and they can't count any of the straight-party ballots. So they won't be reporting any of their early or absentee votes to us tonight."
2/3/1999
Honolulu Star Bulletin
[Full Story]
Tom Eschberger, a vice president of Election Systems & Software, which provided the computers for the election, said a test conducted soon after the election on the software and the machine that malfunctioned in a Waianae precinct showed the machine worked normally.
He said the company did not know about the problem with the machine until after the Supreme Court-ordered recount, when a second test on the same machine detected the malfunction. He said the company is still investigating.
Hawaii's primary election was the first major test of the AIS-100 precinct machines, and Eschberger said unforeseen problems with a new machine can happen. "But again, in all fairness, there were 7,000 machines in Venezuela and 500 machines in Dallas that did not have problems," he said.
11/03/1999
The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Norfolk, VA
Almost a third of Norfolk's precincts could not tally voting results Tuesday because of malfunctioning vote-counting machines, leaving officials scrambling to do a recount that will affect every contested race in the city.
"This is a bad situation," said Ann Washington, Norfolk's voter registrar...The affected machines showed totals of zero even though votes had been cast. Officials suspected that faulty computer chips were the cause and were unsure if the problem would be resolved before today.
"Somehow, they lost their ability to count the votes," Edward O'Neal, vice chairman of the Norfolk Electoral Board said of the computer chips' programming.
"I vote at Brownsville Elementary in Crozet. Our voting is done by push button technology. Everything went fine until I got to the last question...When I pushed the button beside "No" the machine registered my vote as a "Yes." I tried this a couple of more times and got the same result. Finally, I poked my head outside the curtain and asked the "attendant" what I should do to make the machine register my vote. He explained how the voting procedure worked...I explained that I understood what I was supposed to do, but that whenever I made my choice, the opposite choice lit up. He suggested then that I should intentionally push the wrong button..." [more]
In the first election I witnessed in South Carolina (it was 1970, I believe), a voting machine broke down in one of the largest black precincts in Charleston. It was in the middle of the morning rush. There were no replacement machines available, and while a repairman worked on the problem for a couple of hours, several hundred African-Americans eventually left the precinct without getting the chance to vote.
I became righteously indignant, as I often was in those days, but my Charleston friends were philosophical. It happens every election, they told me. And so it did. Never the same precinct. Never the same time of day. Never the same problem with the machine.
But for many elections afterward, somewhere in Charleston on election day, a voting machine in a black precinct would break down for an hour or two. Once is an accident. Twice is incredibly bad luck. Three times or more is a plan. [more]
11/07/1986
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Computer troubles have been blamed for ballot discrepancies in a race that state Sen. Donn Peevy (D-Gwinnett) lost by eight votes. Frances Duncan, director of the state Election Division in the secretary of state's office, said Thursday a partial recount showed 400 fewer ballots cast in the Cates D precinct, 70 more ballots cast in the Dacula precinct, and 44 more ballots cast in the Lawrenceville precinct.
The recount was started Wednesday night at the request of the Republican victor, former Lawrenceville Mayor Steve Pate, but was halted when the discrepancies appeared, said county Elections Superintendent Lloyd Harris. Harris blamed the problem on the computer used to recount the votes. He said an official from a California computer firm will fly to Georgia on Monday to make necessary program changes, and the recount won't be completed until early next week.
08/19/1998
The Kansas City Star
Late Monday afternoon, Thornburgh's office told Neuenswander that canvassers had discovered a 3,000-vote discrepancy in the Douglas County vote tallies. The 3,000 votes brought Neuenswander's total within 24 votes of Bacon, who received 13,556 votes.
The close vote might beg a re-count, but the deadline for such a request was noon Aug. 10. At the time Neuenswander had no idea he was missing 3,000 votes.
He said the discovery was bittersweet. ``I don't really know how to react to it,'' he said Tuesday.
03/26/1987
The Dallas Morning News
The Texas secretary of state's office has decided to assign a computer expert and a lawyer as inspectors for the Dallas city elections on April 4 to check the county's computerized tabulating equipment.
A spokesman for the office said Wednesday that the assignments were made after a briefing by the state attorney general's office, which has been investigating allegations of vote fraud in the tabulating system used in the 1985 mayor's race.
Dallas County District Attorney John Vance said Monday that the attorney general's office has asked his staff for assistance in the investigation, which centers on the reliability of the vote-counting machines and whether they are vulnerable to fraud through subtle changes in computer programs.
04/07/1997
The Tampa Tribune
Bob Stamper, a 10-year state attorney investigator, usually works on white-collar crime cases. But his investigation at the supervisor of elections office involves no crime.
Rather, the probe is focusing on a ballot count that landed Republican Bruce L. Parker at the top of the heap election night, but later unseated him in favor of Democrat Marlene Duffy Young after a court-ordered hand recount.
Todd Urosevich, a vice president of American Information Systems [now ES&S], which made Polk's troubled ballot-counting equipment, already has been interviewed by Stamper, and told Stamper his machines were not responsible for the miscount.
02/14/2000
Birmingham Post
England
Finally, and most importantly, there is the issue of security. What steps will our council leaders be taking to secure the computer system? The initial report does not say.
Yet if there were to be unauthorised access to the computer, there could be amendment of data (for example, 100 Conservative votes suddenly becoming 100 Labour ones) or there could be scrutiny of data - in other words, it could be possible to see which candidate a particular elector has voted for.
Thinking up new ways to increase turn out at local elections is all very well, but voters need to be 100 per cent sure that the results are accurate, have not been tampered with, and that voter secrecy is maintained.
11/19/2001
Houston Chronicle
"We have a problem where voters are being turned away from polls even though they have the proper identification," said Joe Householder, spokesman for the Brown campaign. "A potential reason may be that computers were down, but that is not an excuse. The law is pretty clear on this."
A computer problem cut off access to the county's voter registration database for about one hour after polls opened Saturday afternoon, said Tony Sirvello, administrator of elections for the Harris County Clerk's Office.
...the problem affected four polling sites: the Fiesta Mart on Kirby, the Spring Branch Community Center, Kashmere Multi-Service Center and the Sunnyside Multi-Service Center.
04/29/2002
Network World Fusion
Vivendi: Electronic vote may have been hacked
An electronic vote at Vivendi Universal SA's shareholder meeting last Wednesday may have been hacked, throwing suspicion on shareholder votes at other companies using electronic voting technology, the company announced Sunday...A preliminary inspection of the equipment revealed no signs of tampering, Vivendi said. However, it said that a small team with a transmitter-receiver and detailed knowledge of the protocols used by the wireless voting system could have fraudulently manipulated the vote.
02/11/2002
The San Francisco Chronicle
Jones' investigation raised the specter of massive inaccuracies in the November 2000 vote count -- enough to put in question the election of some members of the Board of Supervisors...For instance, in precinct 3213 on Russian Hill, the city reported counting 328 ballots and 327 signatures were in the roster. But when state investigators opened the box for that precinct that city officials pulled from storage, they found only 170 ballots.
In one precinct, the major discrepancies found by Jones seem to have existed on election night as well. In polling place 2214 in the Western Addition, the city counted 416 ballots, but there were only 362 signatures in the roster, and the secretary of state found only 357 paper ballots.
09/17/2002
The Bradenton Herald
Union County...has had trouble-free elections dating back at least to the early 1920s as the only county in Florida that continued to hand count its ballots. But that changed this year...The old way, stacking and restacking the color-coded ballots into winners and counting them, could be completed by a dozen or two poll workers in time to send the paperwork to Tallahassee and still be home for the late news on Election Day.
But counting the county's 2,642 ballots using the new optical-scan machinery this year took two days, after a programming error rendered the automatic count useless. So it was back to the tried-and-true hand count for Union County, which is about 130 miles east of Tallahassee.
The equipment vendor, Election Systems and Software Inc., accepted responsibility for the problems, which were caused when a printing error gave both Republican and Democratic ballots the same code. The machines read them both as Republican.
Todd Urosevich, vice-president of election product sales, said the company will pick up the expenses for the hand count and apologized to the county.
About the Author
Bev Harris owns Talion.com, a publicity firm, and has been a professional writer for 10 years. She is the author of "How to Unbezzle a Fortune", a free online report with tips on how to identify accounting fraud and recover embezzled funds, a report that has become an underground hit among business owners who have been victimized. She began researching voting machine companies when she discovered that unauditable private, proprietary codes are used for vote-counting, and that ownership of these companies is also not disclosed — a situation that invites conflict of interest and abuse.
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