Electronic Voting Equipment Problems Tabulated By State And County
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| Back — Voting equipment manufacturers |
Known problems with electronic voting equipment
Summary of commonly-observed problems with electronic voting machines
General and problems with central tabulator
Direct recording election or touch screen machines
A few of the known problems with electronic voting equipment are tabulated below by state and county. Obviously this is a work in progress and the tables are by no means complete and are derived largely from incidents severe enough to be reported in the press. The intent is to summarize the recurring defects encountered in voting machines.
Note that one thing election officials, county clerks, politicians in general, and manufacturers are extremely good at is covering up their errors, especially where they have grossly endangered the most fundamental infrastructure of our society and wasted billions of tax dollars in the process. So just because your state or county doesn't appear here does not imply you don't have e-vote problems. Also, we limit our tabulation to problems with electronic voting machines. For more complete coverage of voting problems in general see such sites as eRiposte, Verified Voting, VotersUnite, or the many other election issue web sites we have listed.
Electronic voting machines have now been in use for decades but the types and numbers of problems are increasing rather than decreasing. In fact, a recurring theme is that a problem was recognized and reported but goes unfixed. The same problem then crops up disastrously in the next general election. Obviously, since the problem exists in all machines made by the same manufacturer, these problems go unreported and unrecognized in many election districts.
Typically where one wants to manipulate the election for fraud is at the central computer where the entire county's election can be changed in minutes. Logistics generally rule out hacking each DRE or even optical scanner, or at least make it difficult. Note that punch card ballots are also tabulated on a central processor, or computer.
Electronic voting machines are supposed to virtually eliminate "human error" in elections. Yet time after when a machine problem occurs it is blamed on "human error." Such fuzzy logic is characteristic of the thinking found whenever the question of why are these machines being used is raised. And all too frequently machine problems are blamed on the poll workers. No, the problems are with the machines.
Fix the problem, not the blame!
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With regard to the HAVA-mandated statewide voter registration database it is reported that Accenture software froze up, failed to print poll books, delayed elections, and mailed voter cards to incorrect addresses in Arkansas for at least three years. |
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Officials had trouble merging totals from early voting, absentee ballots, and election day. Company technician didn't know how to help them. |
Poll watchers questioned whether the tally legally constituted a count, recount, or audit of the election. |
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Voters' selections for mayoral candidate Jackie McPherson were changed on screen to votes for incumbent Paul Muse. Testing confirmed problem. |
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Ballot printer had the wrong format, and the software provided for scanners wouldn't read the ballots, which had to be counted by hand. |
Two days after election deputy county clerk discovered votes from iVotronic machines of Van Buren's Precinct 1-1 were not included in tally finished 4 PM the day before. |
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Optical scanner reported that 1,853 of county's 17,284 voters selected more than one presidential candidate (overvotes). Another 131 ballots were counted as having no vote for president (undervote). |
About one in every eight ballots cast failed to register a choice for president. |
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Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election. |
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Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election. |
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Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election. |
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Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election. |
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Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election. |
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Damaged optical scanning machine scanner disqualified 692 of county's 4,083 voters. Machine also disqualified 433 votes in U.S. Senate race for same reason. |
Apparently there was a scratch on one of sensors in a scanner. |
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Candidate for mayor of Waldenburg voted for himself on the iVotronic, but the tally shows he received no votes. Eight or nine other people said they also voted for him. |
VotersUnite Nov. 11, 2006 |
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Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election. |
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Roughly thirty voters reported that the DRE's cast their vote for the wrong candidate. After they pushed the button for their choice another name popped up. |
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Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election. |
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Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election. |
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Software misdirected 2,747 votes from Sen. John Kerry to Rep. Dick Gephardt in Democratic primary. |
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Ballot jams forced election officials to replace 25 optical scanners. |
Sequoia blamed the problem on a ragged-edged ballot printed by a contractor hired by the county. |
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Results from some absentee ballots were lost election night when the memory card on which they were being stored was corrupted |
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Central processor refused to add results from early and absentee ballots to those cast on DRE's prior to Election Day. |
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In violation of a directive from Sec. of State, poll workers were told by county officials not to offer paper ballots despite backups due to DREs. |
On December 12, 2006, registrar "trust me" Tony Anchundo pled no contest to 43 counts of forgery, misapplication of funds, embezzlement, falsification of accounts, and grand theft. |
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Machine calibrated to detect carbon-based ink, but not dye-based ink commonly used in gel pens, and machines failed to record nearly 7,000 ballots. |
Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 123) Prior to election technician ran test ballots through machine to calibrate reading sensitivity but failed to test for gel ink. |
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Election computer made a 100% error. The error was attributed to a programmer reversing the "yes" and "no" answers in the software used to count the votes. |
Registrar of Voters Office initially announced that a bond issue lost by wide margin. In fact, it was supported by a majority of the ballots cast. |
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Machines shut down for no apparent reason. Also, in 21 districts there were more ballots cast than voters. Election officials believe that around 5,500 voters at 55 polling locations had their ballots tabulated for the wrong location and 1,500 voters use the wrong ballot altogether. |
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None of the voting machines were working at the San Juan Capistrano Community Center at noon. Voting machines were broken at Seal Beach polling place as well. One machine functioned perfectly until the paper record printing on the side wouldn't show vote on Measure A. |
Paper ballots were apparently available for Democrats, but none for Republicans in this bastion of conservatism. |
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Tabulation software overloaded and started deleting votes from the tallying system. |
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Voting machines weren't working and no paper ballots provided for voters. Long lines. DREs ran out of paper. Some machines delivered but never became operable for the election. As one result 100,000 absentee ballots remained uncounted 10 days after the election. |
Some voters used ballots from another precinct and modified them. County first went to DREs in 2000 and situation is getting worse rather than better. Election office says they have never before received so many absentee ballots. |
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In more than half the precincts the touch screen machines failed to boot |
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In polling place 2214, machines counted 416 ballots, but there were only 362 signatures in the roster, and the secretary of state found only 357 paper ballots. |
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Machine problems caused voters to be sent away without balloting in Stockton, Lodi, Tracy and Morada. Voters at First Unitarian Universalist Church in Stockton couldn't vote for three hours because machines broke down twice. |
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Early voting centers used a wireless computer connected to a voter-registration database to match signatures and prevent double voting. |
The level of ignorance of basic computer security is astounding. |
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Grand jury found computer voting equipment miscounted ballots for three propositions. Problem was blamed on programming error. |
A hand recount found that Measure A, a statewide proposition, had actually won. |
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Computer malfunction mislabeled 500 paper polling-place ballots as absentee ballots. The Sequoia representative didn't know the cause of the problem. |
Assistant Clerk and Recorder Bev Ross said she was told machines had been incorrectly set to receive information for the wrong type of machine, although she wasn't certain of the cause. |
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Optical scanner s rejected ballots at dozen precincts. Scanner at county Fire Station 37 on Upper Ranch Road, continued to reject ballots as the morning went on unless the override button was used. |
Quite obviously the poll worker and the reporters didn't recognize problems and dangerously allowed use of override button even though no overvotes were apparent on ballots. Counting errors are certain to have occurred. |
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System reversed results between the first- and last-place candidates in City Council race. Someone positioned two of the six candidates out of order when the computer was programmed. |
"The [actual] winner knew something was wrong," says County Clerk-Recorder Tony Bernhard, "when he got one vote in the precinct where his mother and father lived." |
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Optical scanners were misconfigured and didn't read all the votes. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. |
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Al Kolwicz Colorado Constitution requires secret ballot. |
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Scanner doesn't correctly read folded ballots in mail in election. Counts fold in ballot as a vote. |
Longmont Daily Times Call , October 8, 2005. Story by Brad Turner (720) 494-5420, or bturner@times-call.com. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. Recount changed outcome of Salida City Council race. |
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Democratic voter given Republican ballot on DRE at voting center. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. Recount found 97 ballots not included in machine count. Recount found that a school district issue lost by 18 votes after machine count indicated it won by 6 votes. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. |
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Four voting machines malfunctioned. Officials mistakenly assumed these machines were not used but there were 300 votes on them. |
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30% undervote in one school board race led to examination of ballots. Ballot was found to be translucent with bar on opposite side of ballot possibly being read by optical scanner. |
Two months after this election the IT expert for Denver was arrested on charges of felony theft, forgery and embezzlement. He had also been taking election computers home. |
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In first trial of voting centers with DREs CO Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff and Rep. Jerry Frangas were given ballots programmed without their names included as candidates. |
There was a pattern of voters being given wrong ballots on DREs at voting centers. Denver was also one of the last counties to report election results and voting centers opened late when election judges couldn't get machines to boot up. |
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Misprinted barcodes that identify precincts on absentee ballots. County had to hand sort 70,000 ballots into the 23 different ballot styles. Then 1 of 2 optical scanners broke down. |
Vote center, electronic poll book, absentee voting, and voting machine disaster. |
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Due to printer's error, a light smudge ran across the line for a candidate for the Eagle County Home Rule Charter Commission. Optical scanners picked up the smudge as a vote for one of the candidates. |
Vail Daily, October 24, 2005, article by Scott N. Miller. Employees from the clerk's office hand counted the ballots after the error was discovered. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. County clerk indicated problems with ballots marked with wrong writing devices. |
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Bug discovered in mid-July and uncertified software installed before primary election. |
Memorandum from Tari Runyan to Ken Clark, both with Diebold, dated July 15, 2002. See book Black Box Voting p. 186. |
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According to the Election Verification Totals Report 82,463 ballots were scanned. Yet the Daily Totals show 97,620 ballots scanned, a difference of 15,157 ballots. Which number is correct? Many other problems noted in this election. |
Mail in election for city council and tax issue. A pre-election press demonstration revealed a serious programming error by Diebold, whom the city clerk contracted to run election, that didn't count the votes on the tax issue. No known tests or checks were made for other possible computer errors. |
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DRE's failed during early voting at Chapel Hills mall in Colorado Springs. |
Voters were turned away without being given a chance to vote. No paper ballots were available for use when machines failed. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. |
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Software could not correctly count ballots in at least Precinct 20. ES&S had to replace chip then do recount. |
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Instructions unclear on how to mark ballots. Pen one place, pencil another. |
Garfield county clerk hired her son to run ballot optical scanner. Errors ignored. CO Sec. of State finally did hand recount that changed election results. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. |
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Election judge trying to shutdown machine accidentally got administrative access to software. |
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Optical scanner failed and could not count approximately 400 votes. |
Denver Post, November 2, 2005, p. 15A Note that the total population of Mineral County is only about 930. |
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Programming errors, machine malfunctions, no security plan, no logic and accuracy test run. Machines broke down in all seven vote centers. Montrose Pavilion was the worst, 11 out of 12 eSlate machines broke down. |
County clerk and Hart representative didn't even know how to plug voting machines in. Telluride Watch, Nov. 17, 2006. Insufficient paper ballots were available, so poll workers made copies, which the scanners failed to read. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. Recount turned up many undervotes. |
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Election officials posted results indicating that 1,560 people voted in Precinct 5. On Wednesday, amended election returns showed 374 people living in Precinct 5 had voted. |
Phantom votes seem to turn up in Colorado. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. |
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Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. |
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Reported 212,995 presidential votes counted out of 220,871 ballots cast. Difference of 7,876 votes represents undervote of 3.6 percent, almost twice national average. |
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Ballot jams occurred in optical scanners after ballots were read. Some voting machines were delivered to the wrong polling places. |
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Officials said that all the precincts were included in the election and that the new, unauditable touch-screen machines had counted the vote without a major hitch. The next day, the County Elections Office discovered 103,222 votes had not been counted. |
Broward Deputy Elections Supervisor Joe Cotter called the mistake "a minor software thing." |
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Over 10,000 voters signed in at the polls, 134 apparently failed to vote though there was only one race on the ballot. The winner captured the seat by only 12 votes. |
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Tabulation software in central computer reversed the vote count at 32,500. It was triggered when all 97,535 absentee ballots in one mega-precinct were tabulated. |
Bug had been found 2002 election but ES&S neglected to fix it. Some 70,000 votes were changed in this election. |
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553 people voted in Precinct 11R but the DRE's only registered 536 votes cast. |
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More than 66,000 votes for a county commission candidate were recorded when only 39,369 voters went to the polls. |
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Votes recorded on 24 of 26data cartridges would not transfer to be tallied and had to be re-entered manually. |
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Votes recorded on two more cartridges could not be transferred and also had to be re-entered manually. |
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Power surge blamed for incorrect computerized vote tallies. Ballots were then hand counted. Because one candidate won by just 2 votes a second hand count was done. |
All results, including the two hand counts, were completed within 48 hours. |
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Voting machines gave town council elections in Medley and another race to wrong candidates. Problem was attributed to a programming error by voting machine technician. |
Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 127-128) Order of names changed on ballot. Elections Supervisor David Leahy expressed concerned because computer didn't raise red flags; humans had to spot error. |
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Machines locked up, refused to start, or reset. Machines were inoperable at 36 precincts. Machines malfunctioned in a Liberty City precinct by resetting themselves, routing voters back to starting screen. |
Playboy (Sept. 2004). In 31 precincts examined by ACLU the machines lost 1,544 votes, or >8% of votes. Some precincts lost 21% of the votes cast. |
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Serious software bugs caused the audit log data to fail to account for all the ballots cast. Election officials also found the central tabulation machines cannot handle all the audit data, have difficulty taking in data passed through phone line modems, and have trouble merging DRE and optically scanned ballot data. |
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For a single issue election the iVotronics machines showed a 1.0% undervote rate compared to 0.2% rate for absentee paper ballots. Programming error was blamed. ES&S claimed it was county error. |
Miami Herald March 31, 2005 In a single issue election 155,554 ballots were cast, 123,532 in polling places and 31,963 absentee. iVotronics failed to register a vote on 1,246 ballots compared with 61 absentee paper ballots cast. Five other city elections were called into question as a result of these errors. |
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At more than 100 precincts in Orlando area election workers used scissors to cut across flawed ballots before handing them to voters to enable electronic ballot readers to properly record votes. |
Boxes of ballots that had not been cut before workers noticed the problem had to be read by hand. |
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Software program could not tabulate more than 32,767 votes in a single precinct. |
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Voting cards failed to fit properly in slots of some voting machines. That gave 300 votes to Libertarian candidate where only 100 Libertarian voters are registered. |
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Entire precinct left uncounted because operator pressed CLEAR instead of SET. |
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Programming error caused voting machines to freeze up and register incorrect votes. No votes were recorded for 78 voters. |
Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 122 Also, 15 vote cartridges came up missing and were found at home of poll worker. |
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Former news reporter found votes being tabulated for 644 precincts but only 643 precincts had eligible voters. |
Appendix A (p. v). Earlier court case found same problem but it went unresolved. |
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Routine test of electronic voting machines canceled because computer network at elections office malfunctioned. File server went off line before they could back up the system. Malfunction was supposedly caused by power failure during Hurricane Jeanne. The "logic and accuracy" test requires feeding simulated voter data from a computer to actual voting machine. Information is tabulated by computer and checked to ensure it matches a predetermined outcome. |
Air-conditioning was shut off and temperature in the computer room reached 90° F (Note that standards require the voting equipment to operate at temperatures up to 104° F and function after storage at temperatures up to 140° F). State law requires a portion of the county's machines be tested publicly to ensure the equipment will count votes cast for all the offices and measures on ballot. 86 of the 4,720 touch-screen machines are tested publicly. Rest are tested behind closed doors. |
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Nine voting machines at a Boynton Beach precinct not plugged in properly and batteries wore down by 9:30 AM. A poll clerk said 37 votes appeared to be missing after comparison of computer records to sign-in sheet. |
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Voting computer in Clearwater crashed election night. Republicans, who lost, complained about corrupted files, skewed data, and lost votes. |
Chapter 2 (p. 22) and Appendix. Election supervisor Dot Ruggles stated it was not the first time such a crash had occurred. |
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A second recount was required after the first gave Gore more than 400 new votes. Some cards that were thought to have been counted were not. |
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County Commissioner Marlene Young lost election in machine count but won after court ordered a hand recount. |
VP Todd Urosevich claimed his voting machines were not responsible for error. |
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Programming error caused machines to read 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes as entirely Republican. Poll workers were forced to count 2,600 ballots by hand. |
St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 11, 2002 ES&S accepted responsibility for the programming error and paid for hand recount. |
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Clerk in one precinct turned computer off, then back on, accidentally erasing 320 votes. |
Error was only noticed when all ballots were counted by hand. |
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Machines gave Al Gore minus 16,022 votes while at same time giving G. W. Bush 4,000 erroneous votes. Detected when 9,888 votes were noticed for the Socialist Workers Party candidate. |
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Resulted in many errors, including: 0 votes tallied after a full week of voting, requests for permission to upload totals before the election had begun, and messaging regarding whether the card needed to be reformatted. |
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Reported election results don't match election poll tapes found in Volusia county elections office trash. |
After installation of statewide Diebold AccuVote TS touch-screen DRE's in November 2002 ballots in one county in at least three precincts listed the wrong county commission races. While election officials shut down the polls to fix the problem it was unknown how many wrong ballots were cast or how to correct errant votes. In another county the commissioner race was omitted from the ballot. There were frequent malfunctions associated with the ballot cards voters needed to access the machines. In other localities the DRE's froze up and dozens had been misprogrammed.
For more details on the problems with Georgia voting machines see The Election and