Electronic Voting Equipment Problems Tabulated By State And County


 

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General issues with electronic voting

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

Optical scanners


 

States with reported problems

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Mississippi

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

Ohio

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin

 


 

Known problems with electronic voting equipment

Top

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!


 

Alabama

Top

    Table 1: Alabama counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Baldwin

November

2002

Results showed Democrat Siegelman earned enough votes to win the governor's race in Alabama. All the observers went home. Next morning 6,300 of Siegelman's votes had disappeared.

ES&S

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Sludge report

The election for governor was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was requested, but denied. ES&S could not explain the glitch.

The Weekly Standard, November 25, 2002

November

2006

Ballot programming error by ES&S. Republican County Commissioner Wayne Gruenloh, running unopposed, was identified as a Democrat on some electronic ballots, so he was awarded Democratic ticket votes, but not Republican ticket votes.

Press Register

November 14, 2006

About 7,000 votes were changed.


 

Alaska

Top

    Table 2: Alaska problems with electronic voting.

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

November

2004

District-by-district totals for Bush add up to 292,267 but official total was only 190,889, a difference of 101,378. In U.S. Senate race, Lisa Murkowski received 226,992 votes in district-by-district totals but official total was only 149,446, a difference of 77,546.

In 20 of the 40 State House Districts, more ballots were cast than there are registered voters in the district.

In 16 election districts voter turnout percentage given is over 200%.

Diebold

See Vote Counts Don't Add Up

Note: Alaska votes on a statewide basis rather than by counties.


 

Arizona

Top

    Table 3: Arizona counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Maricopa

March

1998

Pamela Justice celebrated her election to Dysart school board but the computer had failed to count 1,019 votes from one precinct. When those votes were added in she lost to her opponent.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 17) and Appendix. County elections director Karen Osborne claimed that an accuracy test done the previous day had worked fine.

September 7

2004

Machine recount resulted in nearly 500 more votes counted on the same ballots. Data are quite conclusive that either the optical scanners failed or there was tampering or at least mishandling of the ballots.

ES&S

Optech IV-C

Prof. Doug Jones

VoteTrustUSA

Phoenix New Times

State Senator Jack Harper (R) issued subpoenas for access to ballots and tabulation equipment used in the 2004 District 20 state representative Republican primary election.

Pima

(Tucson)

1984

826 legitimate ballots were discarded in Oro Valley due to computer error. The error wasn't discovered until after the deadline for counting them.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. ii)

November

1994

826 votes in one Tucson precinct simply evaporated, remaining unaccounted for a month after the election. No recount appears to have been done, even though two-thirds of voters did not get their votes counted.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2.

Election officials said the vanishing votes were the result of a faulty computer program. The programmer is still at large.

1996

Software programming mixed up the votes cast for two Republican Supervisor candidates in city election.

Diebold

General Election Systems at the time.

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. ii)

1997

More than 8,300 votes in the City Council race were initially left uncounted because of defective ballots. The city had to hand-count 79,000 votes because of manufacturing defect in the ballots provided by Diebold.

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. ii)

If it is necessary to hand count paper ballots anyway why pay the voting machine manufacturers anything?

1998

9,675 votes were missed in the tabulation. After canvassing officials realized no votes were recorded for 24 precincts even though voter rolls indicated thousands had voted at those precincts.

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. ii)

Global Elections Systems (now Diebold) tried to figure out why the computer failed to record the votes.


 

Arkansas

Top

    Table 4: Arkansas counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

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.

Carroll

November

2006

Officials had trouble merging totals from early voting, absentee ballots, and election day. Company technician didn't know how to help them.

ES&S

iVotronic DRE

M100 optical scanner

Northwest Arkansas News

November 10, 2006

Poll watchers questioned whether the tally legally constituted a count, recount, or audit of the election.

Cleburne

November

2006

Voters' selections for mayoral candidate Jackie McPherson were changed on screen to votes for incumbent Paul Muse. Testing confirmed problem.

ES&S

iVotronic

Sun Times

Crawford

November

2006

Ballot printer had the wrong format, and the software provided for scanners wouldn't read the ballots, which had to be counted by hand.

ES&S

iVotronic

Press Argus Courier

November 13, 2006

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.

Crittenden

November

2004

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).

ES&S

iVotronic

Thomas Hargrove

About one in every eight ballots cast failed to register a choice for president.

Desha

June

2006

Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election.

ES&S

iVotronic

VoteTrustUSA

Log Cabin Democrat

Garland

June

2006

Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election.

ES&S

iVotronic

VoteTrustUSA

Log Cabin Democrat

Jefferson

June

2006

Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election.

ES&S

iVotronic

VoteTrustUSA

Log Cabin Democrat

Lonoke

June

2006

Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election.

ES&S

iVotronic

VoteTrustUSA

Log Cabin Democrat

Phillips

June

2006

Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election.

ES&S

iVotronic

VoteTrustUSA

Log Cabin Democrat

Pike

November

2004

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.

ES&S

Thomas Hargrove

Apparently there was a scratch on one of sensors in a scanner.

Poinsett

November

2006

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.

ES&S

iVotronic

VotersUnite Nov. 11, 2006

Pope

June

2006

Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election.

ES&S

iVotronic

VoteTrustUSA

Log Cabin Democrat

Pulaski

November

2000

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.

ES&S

iVotronic

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 127)

June

2006

Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election.

VoteTrustUSA

Log Cabin Democrat

Searcy

June

2006

Testing revealed programming errors that could not be corrected in time for election.

ES&S

iVotronic

VoteTrustUSA

Log Cabin Democrat


 

California

Top

    Table 5: California counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Alameda

March

2004

Software misdirected 2,747 votes from Sen. John Kerry to Rep. Dick Gephardt in Democratic primary.

Diebold

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 119)

2006

Ballot jams forced election officials to replace 25 optical scanners.

Sequoia

Sequoia blamed the problem on a ragged-edged ballot printed by a contractor hired by the county.

Mendocino

November

2006

Results from some absentee ballots were lost election night when the memory card on which they were being stored was corrupted

Diebold

VotersUnite

November 10, 2006

Recount to be done as part of canvass process.

Monterey

November

2002

Central processor refused to add results from early and absentee ballots to those cast on DRE's prior to Election Day.

Sequoia

eSlate

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. v).

No problems noted during pre-election tests.

November

2006

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.

Long lines caused many voters to leave without voting.

Monterey County Weekly

November 16, 2006

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.

Napa

March

2004

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.

Sequoia

Optech optical scanner

Wired News

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.

Orange

April

1998

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.

Datavote

Punch card

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

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.

March 2004

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.

Hart Intercivic

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 124)

Problems blamed on poor training of poll workers.

June 6

2006

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.

Total Buzz

Orange County Register

Paper ballots were apparently available for Democrats, but none for Republicans in this bastion of conservatism.

Riverside

November

2000

Tabulation software overloaded and started deleting votes from the tallying system.

Sequoia Edge

City Beat

November

2006

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.

The Desert Sun

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.

Press Enterprise

November 17, 2006

Election office says they have never before received so many absentee ballots.

San Diego

March

2004

In more than half the precincts the touch screen machines failed to boot

Diebold

Accu-Vote TS

Independent Media TV

San Francisco

(San Francisco)

November

2000

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.

ES&S

Mark Sense

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iv).

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 127)

San Joaquin

(Stockton)

June 6

2006

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.

Diebold

TSx

Associated Press

 

San Mateo

June 6

2006

Early voting centers used a wireless computer connected to a voter-registration database to match signatures and prevent double voting.

 

Mercury News

The level of ignorance of basic computer security is astounding.

Stanislaus

November

1998

Grand jury found computer voting equipment miscounted ballots for three propositions. Problem was blamed on programming error.

ES&S

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

A hand recount found that Measure A, a statewide proposition, had actually won.

Tehama

November

2006

Computer malfunction mislabeled 500 paper polling-place ballots as absentee ballots. The Sequoia representative didn't know the cause of the problem.

Sequoia

VotersUnite

November 10, 2006

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.

Ventura

June 6

2006

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.

Sequoia

Ventura County Star

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.

Yolo

1996

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.

Datavote

Punch card

"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."


 

Colorado

Top

    Table 6: Colorado counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

State

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Arapahoe

November

2000

Optical scanners were misconfigured and didn't read all the votes.

Sequoia

Denver Post, November 29, 2000.

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iii).

Democrats wanted recount but had to pay $11,000 to get it.

Bent

November

2005

Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005

Boulder

2004

Machine identifies voter.

Hart Intercivic

Al Kolwicz Colorado Constitution requires secret ballot.

November

2005

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.

VoteTrustUSA

Chaffee

November

2005

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.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005

August 8

2006

Democratic voter given Republican ballot on DRE at voting center.

 

Denver Post

August 13, 2006

Clear Creek

November

2005

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.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005

Custer

November

2005

Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005

Denver

November

2000

Four voting machines malfunctioned. Officials mistakenly assumed these machines were not used but there were 300 votes on them.

Sequoia

optical scanner & DREs

 

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iv).

November

2003

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.

Denver Post

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.

August 8

2006

primary

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.

Denver Post

August 9-10, 2006

October 25, 2006 (p. 21A)

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.

November

2006

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.

Eagle

November 2005

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.

Diebold

AccuVote

optical scanners

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.

Elbert

November

2005

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.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005

El Paso

(Colorado Springs)

August

2002

Bug discovered in mid-July and uncertified software installed before primary election.

Diebold

AccuVote

optical scanners

and DRE's

Memorandum from Tari Runyan to Ken Clark, both with Diebold, dated July 15, 2002. See book Black Box Voting p. 186.

April

2003

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.

November 2005

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.

August

2008

During closing tallies the TSx locked-up when supervisors card was inserted. The screen read "NOT AUTHORIZED." A tally tape to post on the door could not be made and election judges were not able to balance voter record books.

Holmes Middle School, 2455 Mesa Road. Precinct's 147, 197, 250. When the supervisor called election clerk's office they were told to just pack-up the Diebold TSx and bring it to drop-off point as this was happening with many of the units around the county.

Fremont

November

2005

Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005

Garfield

November

2000

Software could not correctly count ballots in at least Precinct 20. ES&S had to replace chip then do recount.

ES&S

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 22) and Appendix.

2003

Instructions unclear on how to mark ballots. Pen one place, pencil another.

Scanner could read pencil but not pen marks.

Sequoia

optical scanner

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.

Huerfano

November

2005

Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005

La Plata

August

2006

Election judge trying to shutdown machine accidentally got administrative access to software.

Diebold

AccuVote DREs

Denver Post

October 25, 2006 (p. 21A)

Mineral

November 2005

Optical scanner failed and could not count approximately 400 votes.

Diebold

AccuVote

optical scanners

Denver Post, November 2, 2005, p. 15A

Note that the total population of Mineral County is only about 930.

Montrose

November

2006

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.

Hart Intercivic

Montrose Daily Press

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.

Park

November

2005

Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State. Recount turned up many undervotes.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005

Pitkin

November

2005

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.

Diebold

AccuVote

optical scanners

GEMS report generator

Aspen Times

Phantom votes seem to turn up in Colorado.

Pueblo

November

2005

Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005

Sedgwick

November

2005

Random audit didn't match machine count. All ballots were hand recounted on orders from Sec. of State.

ES&S

Optech III-P Eagle

Denver Post

December 5, 2005


 

Delaware

Top

    Table 7: Delaware counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

New Castle

2000

Large undervote in presidential race.

 

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.


 

Florida

Top

    Table 8: Florida counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Bay

September

2002

Ballot jams occurred in optical scanners after ballots were read. Some voting machines were delivered to the wrong polling places.

 

AP, Sept. 10, 2002

Broward

November

2002

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.

ES&S

iVotronics

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Broward Deputy Elections Supervisor Joe Cotter called the mistake "a minor software thing."

January

2004

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.

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 128)

Some confusion as to year. Fund says 2003.

November

2004

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.

Miami Herald

Bug had been found 2002 election but ES&S neglected to fix it. Some 70,000 votes were changed in this election.

553 people voted in Precinct 11R but the DRE's only registered 536 votes cast.

Laura Sue Wilansky

Elections Official

Precinct 11R, Broward County

Collier

September

2002

More than 66,000 votes for a county commission candidate were recorded when only 39,369 voters went to the polls.

 

Online Journal

Hillsborough

April

2202

Votes recorded on 24 of 26data cartridges would not transfer to be tallied and had to be re-entered manually.

Sequoia

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 122

March

2003

Votes recorded on two more cartridges could not be transferred and also had to be re-entered manually.

Manatee

February

2000

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.

 

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iv)

All results, including the two hand counts, were completed within 48 hours.

Miami-Dade

March-April

2002

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.

ES&S

iVotronics

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.

September

2002

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.

AP, Sept. 10, 2002

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.

May-July

2004

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.

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 127)

Election officials are having to do the debugging for ES&S.

March

2005

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.

Orange

(Orlando)

September

2002

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.

ES&S

NY Times, Sept. 11, 2002

Boxes of ballots that had not been cut before workers noticed the problem had to be read by hand.

November

2004

Software program could not tabulate more than 32,767 votes in a single precinct.

Orlando Sentinel

Osceola

November

2000

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.

 

The New York Times,

November 10, 2000,

National Edition, p. A24.

Misaligned card machines have long been a source of errors.

Palm Beach

November

2000

Entire precinct left uncounted because operator pressed CLEAR instead of SET.

Sequoia

The New York Times,

November 10, 2000,

National Edition, p. A24

March

2002

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.

November

2002

Former news reporter found votes being tabulated for 644 precincts but only 643 precincts had eligible voters.

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. v). Earlier court case found same problem but it went unresolved.

L&A test

October

2004

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.

Wired News

Common Dreams

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.

November

2004

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.

eRiposte

Pinellas

November

1998

Voting computer in Clearwater crashed election night. Republicans, who lost, complained about corrupted files, skewed data, and lost votes.

Sequoia

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 22) and Appendix. Election supervisor Dot Ruggles stated it was not the first time such a crash had occurred.

1999

Computer problems delayed election.

St. Petersburg Times

November

2000

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.

The New York Times,

November 10, 2000,

National Edition, p. A24.

Polk

November

1996

County Commissioner Marlene Young lost election in machine count but won after court ordered a hand recount.

ES&S

(Then American Information Systems)

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

VP Todd Urosevich claimed his voting machines were not responsible for error.

Union

September

2002

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.

ES&S

Optical scan

St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 11, 2002

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

ES&S accepted responsibility for the programming error and paid for hand recount.

Volusia

November

2000

Clerk in one precinct turned computer off, then back on, accidentally erasing 320 votes.

Diebold

AccuVote

Optical scan and

touch screen

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iv)

Error was only noticed when all ballots were counted by hand.

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.

The New York Times,

November 10, 2000,

National Edition, p. A24

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 16) and Appendix

November

2004

25 memory card failures reported.

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.

BlackBoxVoting

Outright fraud

Reported election results don't match election poll tapes found in Volusia county elections office trash.

BlackBoxVoting


 

Georgia

Top

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 Black Box Voting.

    Table 9: Georgia counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Bibb

November

2002

One memory card was missing after the election.

Diebold

AccuVote TS

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 24).

DeKalb

November

2002

Ten memory cards were missing after the election.

Diebold

AccuVote TS

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 24).

Glynn

November

2002

One memory card was missing after the election.

Diebold

AccuVote TS

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 24).

Fulton

(Atlanta)

July

1998

After votes had been cast, on-the-spot reprogramming was done because computer would not read any votes cast for state representative Sharon Cooper.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

"The computer couldn't find her votes at all." said Paul Ruth, applications manager of the county's IT department.

November

2002

Memory cards from 67 DRE's were misplaced and ballots cast on those machines were left out of totals. 56 memory cards with 2,180 ballots were located and counted but 11 cards were still missing two days after the election.

Diebold

AccuVote TS

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 24).

A "memory card" is an electronic ballot box about the size of a credit card.


 

Hawaii

Top

    Table 10: Hawaii problems with electronic voting.

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

November

1998

After a suspiciously narrow victory for the incumbent governor ES&S admitted that during the general elections their voting machines had malfunctioned in at least seven precincts.

Despite recent, serious technical problems in Venezuela, Canada, and four American states, ES&S blamed the malfunctions on "ignorant poll workers," "ignorant voters," and even "piggish voters" who brought food into the voting booths that fell into their delicate machines.

A software programming error caused the new $3.8 million system to miss 41,015 votes because the machines did not count ballots from 98 precincts.

ES&S later stated its machines had a ±1% margin of error.

ES&S

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 97-100 and 127)

ES&S responded to critics by threatening lawsuits, writing scathing rebuttals to journalists, and the usual public relations spin campaign.

Tom Eschberger, ES&S vice president, was also involved at the time in bribing the Arkansas Secretary of State but was granted immunity in that case.

Despite ES&S's machine and software failures both in the U.S. and abroad in 1998 Hawaii's chief election officer awarded ES&S an exclusive contract for eight years without open bidding.


 

Idaho

Top

    Table 11: Idaho counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Ada

November

2006

Computer system used to report votes crashed when it became disconnected from the machines used to tabulate the votes.

 

Star Tribune

November 9, 2006

Adams

November

2004

Only 2,063 of the 2,283 ballots cast registered vote for president (10% undervote).

 

Thomas Hargrove

County clerk angrily refused to even discuss the problem.

Bannock

November

2006

Scanners couldn't read ballots and failed to recognize the recommended ink. Machine malfunctions caused serious election night complications and one scanner broke down.

ES&S

M100 optical scanner

Star Tribune

November 9, 2006

Ballots had to be marked over by hand by election officials.


I

Illinois

Top

    Table 12: Illinois counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Cook

(Chicago)

November

1998

108 of 403 precincts were not counted. A pin from the cable connecting the ballot reader to the counting computer had gotten bent after three-fourths of the precincts had been counted.

 

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iii)

No one could explain how a pin inside a cable had become bent during the middle of the count. Judge disallowed recount.

March

2006

Technical problems using both DREs and optical scanners delayed election results for a week in Chicago primary. Transmission of results from polling sites were delayed, so results from roughly half the 2,400 precincts were hand-delivered instead.

Sequoia

New York Times

An independent panel will examine the problem.

Kane

November

1993

Specially enhanced computer program produced wrong data on election night and omitted 8 precincts in the tally. Prior tests indicated perfect functionality.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Results suggested local referendum issue lost when it actually won. Vote totals for a dozen races were incomplete.

Lake

(Waukegan)

April 1,

2003

"I knew something was wrong when I looked up the results in my own precinct and it showed zero votes," said Democrat Rafael Rivera, according to the Chicago Tribune. "I said, 'Wait a minute. I know I voted for myself.'" Clerk Willard Helander blamed the problem on ES&S.

ES&S

Optical scan

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Democratic candidate Rivera said he felt as if he were living an episode of The Twilight Zone. No votes showed up for him, not even his own.


 

Indiana

Top

    Table 13: Indiana counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

In March 2004 voters in four Indiana counties learned that ES&S installed uncertified software on the iVotronics machines after the certified version didn't properly county their votes. Also, software bugs caused the audit log data to fail to account for all the ballots cast.

ES&S

iVotronics DRE's

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 126-127)

So much for the value of "certification." And nothing was said about elections run with the faulty software.

Boone

November

2003

5,352 voters somehow cast 144,000 votes. County Clerk Lisa Garofolo traced problem to software programming errors, not deliberate fraud.

MicroVote DRE

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 125)

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

How does one tell deliberate fraud from a "programming error"?

Brown

November

2004

Scanner showed 63 unvoted ballots in one precinct. Problem either with machine or pens used to mark ballots.

ES&S

Optical scanners

Palladium Item

Law did not allow election board to reject certification by the precinct board so nothing was done.

Carroll

November

2004

Had to hand count county council votes in its 19 precincts on election day.

ES&S

Palladium Item

Indiana Election Commission determined computer program didn't comply with Indiana law for that office.

The same software problem occurred in the 2003 municipal election in one precinct, which was hand counted.

Delaware

November

2006

Incorrect PIN number halted voting on electronic voting machines. As a result 1,699 provisional, paper ballots were cast and polls kept open until 8:40 PM.

 

Star Press

November 14, 2006

Also, 63 absentee ballots found in drawer after election.

Franklin

November

2004

Error caused straight-party Democratic ballots to be counted for Libertarian candidates and straight-party Libertarian ballots to be counted for Democratic candidates. Recount changed the outcome of election. One of three seats went to formerly defeated Democrat Carroll Lanning and took a seat from initially-declared winner, Republican Roy N. Hall.

Fidlar Software

Optical scanner

Palladium Item

Grant

May

2004

No votes were recorded in any precincts because of a software problem.

MicroVote DRE

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 125)

Lake

November

2006

System would not combine totals from new and old e-voting machines.

MicroVote DRE

Infinity

NW Indiana Times

November 15, 2006

Poll worker's unfamiliarity with new Infinity raised concerns about whether 60 e-voting machines were ever activated on Election Day or properly canvassed after polls closed.

LaPorte

November

2004

All 74 precincts showed exactly 300 ballots cast.

County clerk apparently downloaded a software patch from ES&S during the election (a definite no-no). However, the patch didn't fix the problem either.

ES&S

WNDU 16 News

Brad Blog

Marion

November

2003

April

2004

County Clerk Doris Sadler accused ES&S of lying and a cover-up. ES&S' on-site project manager, Wendy Orange, blew the whistle on her employer. Orange informed Sadler on April 16, 2004, that ES&S installed illegal, uncertified software for November 2003 election then replaced it with legal software on March 30, 2004.

ES&S

WISH-TV April 20, 2004

WISH-TV April 22, 2004 — 1

WISH-TV April 22, 2004 — 2

Ripley

November

2004

Optical scan memory cards had the wrong precinct labels.

Fidlar Software

Palladium Item

Programming error.

Vanderburgh

November

2004

Some voters who cast straight-party Democratic ballots saw their votes show up as votes for Republican Party.

Equipment breakdowns also reported.

ES&S

Courier Press

County Commissioners voted unanimously to conduct an "independent audit." County is leasing machines under five-year, $2.9 million agreement.


 

Iowa

Top

    Table 14: Iowa counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Allamakee

November

2000

Optical-scan machine was fed 300 ballots and reported 4 million votes. County auditor tried the machine again but got the same result. Eventually, ES&S, agreed to have replacement equipment sent.

ES&S

Wall Street Journal

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Republicans hoped that the tiny but heavily Republican county would tip the scales in George W. Bush's favor, but tipping it by four million votes attracted national attention.

Pottawattamie

June 6

2006

Early vote tally showed popular 23-year incumbent losing to 19-year-old college student. Election officials stopped machine count.

Hand count showed that scanners had miscounted every race on the ballot.

Programmer did not allow for candidate rotation on ballots.

ES&S

Optical scanner

Radio Iowa

Daily Nonpareil

Rules require that paper ballots rotate the names from precinct to precinct. Candidate A might be at the top of the ballot in precinct one, but number two in precinct two, number three in precinct three, and so on. But scanner was programmed as though same candidate order always applied in every precinct.


 

Kansas

Top

    Table 15: Kansas counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Clay

August

2002

In commissioner primary, voting machines said Jerry Mayo ran close race but lost, garnering 48% of the vote. Hand recount revealed Mayo won by a landslide, receiving 76% of the vote.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Software programming errors.

Absentee ballot count was also reversed.

Lawrence Journal World, August 22, 2002.

Johnson

April

2002

Incorrect vote totals were discovered in six races leaving county officials scrambling to make sure the unofficial results were accurate. Internal checks revealed that the system had under- and over- reported hundreds of votes. Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt said the voting machines worked fine, they just tabulated wrong. The problem, however, was so perplexing that Schmidt asked the Board of Canvassers to order a hand recount to make sure the results were accurate. Unfortunately, the touch screen machines did away with ballots. So the only way to do hand recount was to have the machines print internal data page by page. In some cases, vote totals changed dramatically.

Diebold

AccuVote TS

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. iv-v)

New Diebold touch screen machines, proclaimed a success on election night, did not work as well as originally believed.

"The machines performed terrifically," said Robert J. Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems. "The anomaly showed up on the reporting part." Diebold tried to re-create the error in hopes of correcting it. "I wish I had an answer," Urosevich said.

So if the system gives the wrong answers that's acceptable?

Reno

2000

3,176-vote error in reporting the number of ballots cast in the presidential race.

 

"I'm absolutely confident the candidate totals are correct. But we had a programming error for our optical scanner and some (of the ballots cast) got counted twice." Cindy Moore, deputy elections officer

Wyandotte

(Kansas City)

September

1998

Republican John Bacon celebrated resounding victory by margin of 3,018 votes for Board of Education seat. Two weeks later the margin of victory turned out to be just 24 votes.

 

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iii)

No one offered any explanation for the discrepancy.


 

Louisiana

Top

    Table 16: Louisiana parishes where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Ascension

November

2002

More than 200 voting machines malfunctioned.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 24).

Orleans

(New Orleans)

1994

Voting machine tests performed and videotaped by candidate Susan Barnecker demonstrated that votes she cast for herself were electronically recorded for her opponent.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. i)

This test was repeated several times with the same result.

Saint Bernard

November

2002

Voting machine ate 35 absentee votes and 34 votes separated the candidates in the justice of the peace race.

 

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. vi). Ballots became inaccessible when system locked up and even technician couldn't access them.

Tangipahoa

November

2002

At least 20% of voting machines throughout the parish malfunctioned.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 23) and Appendix.


 

Maryland

Top

    Table 17: Maryland counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Anne Arundel

(Annapolis)

September

2006

Machines used to check people in weren't synchronized at polling locations, machines shut down without warning, and registered voters weren't found in the system.

Poll books may not match number of ballots cast.

Diebold

The Capital

Electronic poll books allowed voter to vote twice and denied other voters chance to vote.

Electronic poll books did not recognize names that started "Mc" or "O." State Elections Administrator Linda Lamone blamed problems on election judges.

Baltimore

(Baltimore)

November

1999

Untested modifications and failure to properly update software led to computer failures that delayed election results.

Sequoia

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 18) and Appendix. After mayor threatened to sue Sequoia agreed to reimburse city for the problems and overtime.

September

2006

Electronic poll books frequently crashed while initializing smart cards and when rebooted said voter had already voted. Poll books also failed to sync and keep track of who had voted.

Diebold

TSx

Avi Rubin blog

Montgomery

September

2006

Local election organizers forgot to include smart cards for machines in precinct supply kits.

Diebold

Vote Trust USA

Polls were kept open late but paper provisional ballots had to be used when e-voting equipment failed.


 

Massachusetts

Top

    Table 18: Massachusetts counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Essex

(Marblehead)

May

2004

Ballots were miscounted. In one race the machine count was 1,834 to 1,836 but hand recount showed actual tally of 1,831 to 1,830 and election results were overturned.

Diebold

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 119)

Worcester

(Uxbridge)

April

2004

Voting machines skipped over more than 170 ballots affecting the outcome of at least one election.

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 119)

Candidates in other races did not request a recount in time and those races could not legally be recounted.


 

Mississippi

Top

    Table 19: Mississippi counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Hancock

June 6

2006

Printer error shut down many of the machines across the county.

Diebold

TSx

Clarion-Ledger

Democratic Party chairman Chuck Tolar said that "If you ask me these machines are kind of fragile."

Hinds

2003

Some computers broke down after overheating, others failed to even start.

Advanced Voting Solutions

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 121)

The local election was completely invalidated.

Jackson

June 6

2006

Voting machines programmed incorrectly.

Touch-screen machines were not customized for each precinct.

Diebold

TSx

Clarion-Ledger

Sun Herald

Poll workers had to rely on paper ballots for five hours until they could be fixed.

Lauderdale

June 6

2006

Ballot card encoder would not work at Central Fire Station precinct.

Diebold

TSx

Meridian Sun

Encoder essential to generate card so voter can vote.

Leflore

June 6

2006

Voting machines programmed incorrectly.

Touch-screen machines were not customized for each precinct. A number of machines suffered battery failure.

Diebold

TSx

Clarion-Ledger

Sun Herald

Greenwood Commonwealth

Poll workers had to rely on paper ballots for five hours until they could be fixed.


 

Missouri

Top

    Table 20: Missouri counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Worth

November

2004

Only 1,132 of 1,326 ballots registered a presidential vote (15% undervote).

 

Thomas Hargrove


 

Montana

Top

    Table 21: Montana counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Flathead

November

2006

Optical scanner memory cartridges read by the computers counted all votes for just one candidate.

ES&S

Missoula Independent

November 16, 2006


 

Nebraska

Top

In November 2002 Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Charlie Matulka, went to the polls to vote for himself. When he was given a ballot produced by ES&S , in which his opponent Chuck Hagel retains a financial interest and was once CEO, Matulka noticed that the ballot had already been filled out in Hagel's favor. In Appendix A (p. vi) of Black Box Voting , Bev Harris refers to this as "the most newfangled voting of all — not just electronic voting, but automatic voting."

There are also persistent rumors that both optical scanners and DRE's have been programmed with default voting so that if a voter doesn't pick a candidate or vote for an issue, the machine votes its pick for them.

    Table 22: Nebraska counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Sarpy

November

2002

Vote-counting machines failed to tally "yes" votes on the Gretna school-bond issue, giving the false impression that the measure failed miserably. The measure actually passed by a 2-1 margin.

ES&S

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Responsibility for the errors was attributed to ES&S, the Omaha company that provided the ballots and the machines.

November

2004

As many as 10,000 too many votes tallied

3,342 votes counted in one ward with less than 3,000 registered voters.

WOWT 6 News


 

Nevada

Top

    Table 23: Nevada counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Clark

(Las Vegas)

July

1996

A technician removed thousands of files from the tabulation sector of the program during the vote count "to speed up the reading of the count."

Sequoia

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Quotes from an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Reconfiguring a computer program that affects the vote tabulation is prohibited without prior state verification.

October

2002

Many votes were not registered by the touch screen machines. Sequoia failed to tell other counties and states about the error and it reoccurred elsewhere, e.g., Bernalillo County, New Mexico.

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 122-123)

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Washoe

(Reno)

November

1998

Breathtaking number of snafus in registrar's office caused candidates to liken election to movie, "Groundhog Day," with every day starting all over to repeat itself. Count votes...Computer failure...

Go to court...Count more votes...Software programming error...More counting...Back to court... And so on...

 

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iii).


 

New Jersey

Top

    Table 24: New Jersey counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Atlantic

November

2002

Computer irregularity in vote-counting system caused 3 of 5 relay stations to fail.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 23-24)and Appendix. Hand count had to be done from machine tapes.

Bergen

November

1996

County Clerk Kathleen Donovan blamed voting computers for conflicting tallies that rose and fell by 8,000 or 9,000 votes. The swings perplexed candidates of both parties. For example, Cassano, a Republican, had beaten Democrat Guarino by about 7,000 votes as of the day after the election but the lead evaporated later.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. i-ii)

One candidate actually lost 1,600 votes during the counting.

Camden

November

2002

44 of 46 machines malfunctioned in Cherry Hill. Election workers had to turn away ~100 early voters when it was discovered that 96% of the voting machines couldn't register votes for mayor, despite the machines' having been pretested and certified for use.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 23) and Appendix.

Essex

November

2006

24 voting machines malfunctioned and were unable to be used in the election. 14 will have to be replaced because of circuit problems. Six other machines experienced switch problems on election day and were repaired in the field by technicians.

Sequoia

Advantage

Localsource.com

November 15, 2006

One of three machines in West Orange broke down for an hour, "but a technician came to the site and showed poll workers how to fix the problem themselves, in case it were to happen again."

Ocean

November

2006

Software "glitches" caused votes to be counted twice. Voting machines properly recorded votes but summary reports sent to the county were in error.

County election officials suspect a software update from Sequoia came with a fault that doubled count of about 150 ballots cast on a single Barnegat machine, then added 75 votes from that unit to a vote tally in a Lakewood district.

Sequoia

VotersUnite Nov. 14, 2006

Asbury Park Press

November 16, 2006

Officials suggest that the Sequoia software didn't prevent the system from reading results from some machines twice, but they cannot explain how votes from one district were transferred to summary reports in another. Sequoia has acknowledged a software error.

Passaic

February

2000

About 75% of voting machines failed to work when polls opened. Paper ballots then had to be used.

Sequoia

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 23) and Appendix. Consultant concluded problem was sabotage but reversed himself without explanation after problem was referred to FBI.

November

2006

As 2006 election returns were electronically transferred from voting districts to the clerk's office, two voting districts had tallies that did not match the voting totals recorded by the machines.

Herald News,

December 2, 2006


 

New Mexico

Top

    Table 25: New Mexico counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Bernalillo

(Albuquerque)

November

2000

Software programming error led officials to withhold 60,000 ballots from their vote count.

Sequoia

touch screen DRE's

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iv)

Problem in voting database prevented a tabulation of any straight-party ballots.

November

2002

Ten days after the election Richard Romero noticed that 48,000 people had voted early on unauditable touch-screen computers, but only 36,000 votes had been tallied—a 25% error.

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 122-123)

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Sequoia VP Howard Cramer apologized for not mentioning that the same problem had happened just weeks before in Clark County, Nevada.

October-

November

2004

Early voters claim voting machines repeatedly mark wrong choices.

Albuquerque Journal

Tri-Valley Herald

318 absentee presidential ballots cast but only 166 absentee ballots reported.

Albuquerque Journal

Rio Arriba

2000

678 presidential votes were not recorded due to programming errors. 203 voters turned out in one of Rio Arriba's voting districts, but state's certified results show "0" votes were recorded for Gore or Bush. Same was true for the U.S. Senate and House candidates. In another, 188 of the 569 voters cast a presidential vote. In yet another district, two-thirds of those who voted in the month before Election Day had no votes recorded in any races.

Sequoia

touch screen

DRE's

Washington Post

Al Gore won NM by 366 votes. Steve Fresquez, a state computer technician who oversaw vote counts for Rio Arriba County, said the electronic machines had been programmed incorrectly for early voters, but it was not discovered until days after the election.

Sandoval

November

2004

Republicans claim voting machines changed their vote to Kerry. One Republican candidate for judge found he couldn't vote for himself at first.

 

Tri-Valley Herald

San Miguel

November

2004

In Precinct 14 every single person who voted early (on paper) voted for one presidential candidate or another, while 27% of their neighbors who voted on a DRE Election Day apparently didn't vote for any of them.

 

VoteTrustUSA

Did You Erase Your Own Vote?

Taos

November

2002

DRE's assigned votes to wrong candidates in extremely close races.

One race had a 25-vote margin and another with a 79-vote lead.

No recount was possible.

Sequoia

touch screen DRE's

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A.

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 123)

After noticing that the computer was counting votes under the wrong names, Taos County Clerk Jeannette Rael was told that the problem was a programming error.

November 2004

Optically scanned paper ballots were used in early and absentee voting, and DREs were used on Election Day. In early and absentee voting the presidential undervote rate was well below 1%, while on Election Day the undervote rate soared to almost 10%

VoteTrustUSA

Did You Erase Your Own Vote?


 

New York

Top

    Table 26: New York counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Erie

(Buffalo)

November

2001

Poll book showed 96 Republicans signed in at Ohio Elementary School polling place. But when machine was checked it tallied 121 votes for mayor, 74 for David Burgio, and 47 for Mary Kabasakalian.

 

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iv)

Monroe

(Rochester)

November

2002

Software programming errors hampered and confused vote tally on election night and most of next day.

 

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. vi)

Voting tallies were impounded until totals could be sorted out.

Onondaga

November

1999

Computers gave election to wrong candidate, then gave it back. Bob Faulkner, went to bed Tuesday night confident he helped complete Republican sweep of three open council seats. But after Onondaga County Board of Elections staffers rechecked the totals Faulkner had lost to Democratic incumbent Elaine Lytel. Just a few hours later, election officials discovered a software programming error had given too many absentee ballot votes to Lytel. Faulkner took the lead again.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix


 

North Carolina

Top

    Table 27: North Carolina counties where problems with electronic voting have occurred.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Alamance

November

2006

Printers attached to DRE voting machines had a jam or other problem. In many cases the paper record was unusable for state-mandated audit.

ES&S

Greensboro News & Record

December 15, 2006

Burke

November

2004

Voters cast 34,604 ballots, but only 30,762 votes for president were recorded.

Less than 89% of voters recorded a presidential preference (>11% undervote).

 

Thomas Hargrove

Carteret

November

2004

4,439 ballots were lost because touch-screen system could store only 3,005, far fewer than the 10,000 the machine was said to handle.

UniLect Corp

Patriot system

Computerworld

County was forced to hold another election, one would hope with hand-counted paper ballots.

Same problems with this voting system in Mercer County, Pennsylvania.

Craven

November

2004

Software glitch blamed for a vote miscount that changed the outcome of at least one race in Tuesday's election. In rush to correct the mistake the number of votes for president were 11,283 more votes than the total number cast

ES&S

New Bern Sun

Davidson

November

2000

Computer error allowed election software to count about 5,000 early and absentee ballots twice.

 

North Carolina Independent Media Center.

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. iv).

Gaston

2000

Diebold internal memo referencing vulnerabilities states: "fancy footwork being done in Gaston County,...being 'famous' for end-running the database."

Diebold

Black Box Voting

Diebold memos are widely available on the Internet.

November

2004

Number of voters did not match number of ballots on machines in more than half the precincts.

North Carolina election problems. Problems blamed on poll workers.

About 12,000 votes were found that had not been counted. They were mostly early and absentee votes that were in computer system but not released when other votes were tallied.

Charlotte Observer

Graham

November

2000

Bought used optical scan system from Brunswick County. Machines came up with "crazy numbers" according to Director of Elections, Susan Farley. Election officials had to do 3 different recounts, and all 3 were different. Finally used hand recount.

ES&S

Optech 3P

North Carolina Independent Media Center.

Since 2000 county has used only hand-counted paper ballots.

Guilford

(Greensboro)

November

2004

Used vote-tabulating software with outdated technology and insufficient vote storage. Public vote totals for president were off by 22,000 votes.

ES&S

iVotronic

North Carolina election problems.

November

2006

9% of the printers attached to DRE voting machines had a jam or other problem. In many cases the paper record was unusable for state-mandated audit. In another incident "accessible" features of the iVotronic voting machine failed to provide independent voting for a visually impaired woman who tried it.

Greensboro News & Record

December 15, 2006

Yes! Weekly

One machine fell and broke during the election and ES&S had to be contacted for instructions on how to recover the votes. [Note that isn't a problem with paper ballots.] Problems also with DREs running out of VVPAT paper simultaneously. One roll only holds about 75 ballots.

Jackson

2002

Problems with the firmware caused machines to lose ballots in two precincts after machines falsely sensed their memories were full. Although the machines briefly displayed an error message they did not prevent voters from continuing to cast ballots.

ES&S

iVotronic

Wired News

Mecklenberg

(Charlotte)

1998

After being bribed to do so, election supervisor Bill Culp purchased Microvote machines used from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, after they failed there.

They didn't work any better in North Carolina's climate but Microvote agent who bribed Culp found it a positive career step even though he was convicted as well.

MicroVote

North Carolina Grassroots.org

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 125)

Culp was indicted by federal grand jury for accepting $134,000 in bribes and kickbacks from Microvote agent Ed O'Day and repairman Gene Barnes. O'Day was convicted for bribing a government official but in 2005 he was president of the National Association of Government Suppliers and is still selling voting machines.

November

2004

Elections Director Michael Dickerson said human error caused ballots from at least seven machines used for early voting to be counted twice, and seven others not to be counted at all.

ES&S

Charlotte Observer

Electronic voting machines are supposed to prevent these kinds of errors. Also, election officials almost always blame such problems on "human error" rather than the voting machines.

November

2006

Printers attached to DRE voting machines had a jam or other problem. In many cases the paper record was unusable for state-mandated audit.

Greensboro News & Record

December 15, 2006

Robeson

September

2002

Ballot tabulating machines failed to work properly in 31 of 41 precincts. Local election officials said problem result of software glitch. Ballots had to be recounted.

 

Sun News

Wake

(Raleigh)

November

2002

Touch-screen machines failed to count 436 ballots at two early voting locations. Problem blamed on firmware.

ES&S

iVotronic

Wired News

Verified Voting

County rejected use of touch-screen machines.

Wayne

November

2002

Computer miscount overturned House District 11 result. Incorrect programming caused machines to skip over several thousand party-line votes, both Republican and Democratic.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Fixing the error turned up 5,500 more votes and reversed the election.


 

Ohio

Top

    Table 28: Ohio counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Allen

(Lima)

November

1989

Programming errors prevented accurate vote count for a week. Mayoral and school board elections were in question because of bug.

Sequoia

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. i)

Sequoia didn't appear when requested and county had to figure out the bug.

Athens

November

2006

M100 precinct scanners failed to scan ballots in at least two polling places.

ES&S

Athens News

November 13, 2006

Numerous other problems occurred.

Auglaize

October

2004

Assistant director alleged in resignation letter that former ES&S employee violated election protocol with unauthorized use of county's central tabulating computer.

ES&S

Free Press

Crawford

November

2002

Voting machine malfunctioned with 12 of 67 precincts left to count. Backup machine also malfunctioned.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 24)

Election workers had to use machine in another county to count the votes.

Cuyahoga

(Cleveland)

November

2004

Unusually high number of votes for 3 rd party candidates

ES&S

Punch Card

U.S. House Judiciary Committee

May

2006

primary

The four sources of vote totals, individual ballots, paper trail summary, election archives, and the memory cards, did not all match up. The totals were all different.

Diebold TSx

CNN Lou Dobbs

Election Science Institute

Fairfield

November

2006

Error in tabulation process caused election results to be reported incorrectly. A month after the election Diebold informed county that a change had been needed because Issue 1 had been removed by SoS from ballot.

Diebold

This Week, Dec. 7, 2006

After processing the results correctly tabulator reported changes that reversed outcomes of three issue contests. Diebold informed some other county election boards of the modification but failed to alert Fairfield County.

Franklin

November

1998

One candidate was incorrectly credited with 14,967 votes; another received 6,889 in error. Deborah Pryce and John R. Kasich gained 13,427 votes and 9,784 votes, respectively after election officials hand-checked vote totals in 371 machines that were affected by software programming error.

Danaher Controls

(Guardian)

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. ii-iii)

November

2004

Long lines in predominantly Democratic precincts despite the fact that 68 extra voting machines were available.

See Phillips' article in the Free Press.

Global Research

Free Press

Seems to be a new variant on election manipulation. Require voters to use e-vote machines then don't put enough machines out in precincts of the opposing party.

Computer error with a voting machine cartridge gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct. Unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

Beacon Journal

U.S. House Judiciary Committee

Fox News

Lucas

November 8

2005

14 TSx voting machines sat unattended for 10 days in central hallway at the University of Toledo Scott Park Campus after election.

Paper rolls were blank at end of election on DRE's.

Apparently they were put in upside down.

Diebold

Optical scan and

touch screen TSx

Toledo Blade

November 19, 2005

Toledo Blade

November 20, 2005

Election officials were unconcerned about the possibility of theft.

Mahoning

November

2004

20 to 30 machines needed to be recalibrated during the voting process because some votes for a candidate were being counted for that candidate's opponent.

One machine showed negative 25 million votes for presidential candidate John Kerry.

About a dozen machines needed to be reset because they froze

ES&S

iVotronic

Roanoke Times

Brian Gottstein column

Vindy.com

U.S. House Judiciary Committee

Numerous voters reported that voting for Kerry resulted in vote for Bush. Voters could not correct the error.

Miami

November

2004

19,000 votes added (All for Bush) after 100% of precincts reported.

ES&S

Optical Scan (Central count)

Free Press

U.S. House Judiciary Committee

Montgomery

November

2004

Two precincts had an incredible undervote rate of 25% in the presidential race compared to 2% county-wide.

 

U.S. House Judiciary Committee

Perry

November

2004

More votes cast than voters. Some ballots counted twice, blamed on computer error.

Triad Gov't Systems

U.S. House Judiciary Committee

Sandusky

November

2004

After reviewing the computer discs used to store precinct tallies, it was found some ballots in nine precincts were counted twice. Mistake may have occurred when counted ballots were stacked with those waiting to be counted.

 

News-Messenger

Another "human error" that voting machines were supposed to prevent.

November 8

2005

Optical scanners refused to accept hundreds of ballots ostensibly due to a printing error.

 

Toledo Blade

Election workers had to hand count many ballots.

Summit

(Akron)

December

1997

Scrambled votes: Ed Repp won the election — no, cancel that, a software programming error was discovered — Repp actually lost. Another programming error in same election resulted in incorrect vote totals for the Portage County Board election. Turns out bond referendum results were wrong too.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Wood

November 8

2005

Votes from five polling locations were counted by hand because workers accidentally "set an option [on the five machines] that prevented the results from being transported onto the memory card."

 

Toledo Blade


 

Oregon

Top

    Table 29: Oregon counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Grant

2000

7% undervote for president.

 

Less than 2% undervote is normal.

Klamath

1996

10% of ballots were invalidated because voters reportedly selected more than one presidential candidate.

 

"This suggests the machines were not (correctly) reading the ballots. It should be raising the eyebrows of people like me." Oregon State Elections Director John Lindback.


 

Pennsylvania

Top

    Table 30: Pennsylvania counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

On April 7, 2005, Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro M.Cortes decertified the UniLect Patriot DRE voting system. The system was found to fail to sense touches on multiple occasions during testing and didn't always register or record votes.

Allegheny

(Pittsburgh)

November

2000

Voting machines in predominantly black neighborhoods, including Pittsburgh's 12 th and 13 th wards, began smoking and spitting out jammed and crumpled paper.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 22-23)and Appendix. Poll workers felt machines had been hacked and sabotaged. Repairs were very slow in coming preventing many from voting.

May 16,

2006

primary

Approximately 10% of voting machines failed. In many cases the machines suffered battery failure.

Incorrect versions of voting software were used in some machines.

Versions of software that were not disability compliant were not certified by the state.

Internet security analyst at Carnegie Mellon University witnessed "multi-hour phone calls to ES&S support in Omaha, several iterations of manual file copying and renaming within Microsoft Windows and the generation and regeneration of reports from within the software until the vote totals agreed with the expected results."

ES&S

iVotronic

VoteTrustUSA

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Poll workers had difficulty reaching the county's assistance lines, which were tied up for hours.

In at least one Pittsburgh precinct, the zero report made when the machines were turned on did not list several candidates. A floating technician arrived hours after the polls opened, and citizens had voted on the machine, to inform the Judge of Elections that he would use a "secret code" to cause the machine to print out a tape showing the vote count at zero.

Centre

November

2006

Office of Elections told poll workers to begin voting on two machines without printing the zero tapes that show no votes are already cast, because the iVotronic that prints the zero tapes was not working.

ES&S

iVotronic

Centre Daily Nov. 8, 2006

Poll workers used a paper clip to reset one machine.

Centre Daily Nov. 10, 2006

50 voters walked away without completing their ballots by pressing the Vote button.

Cumberland

November

2005

Programming error awarded all votes by Democrats casting straight-ticket ballot to a Republican.

ES&S

The Sentinel

Problem involved a software coding error in which Kathy Keating's political affiliation was mislabeled as Democrat.

Mercer

November

2004

Computer software glitch caused touch-screen voting machines to malfunction in a dozen precincts. Some machines never operated, some offered only black screens, and some required voters to vote backwards, starting on the last page of the touch-screen system and working back to the front page.

UniLect Corp

Patriot system

Vindy.com

Same problems with this system in Carteret County, North Carolina.

Election workers raced to take paper ballots to polling places in Shenango Valley after series of computer errors. Then they ran out of printed ballots and had to have more printed to finish the election.

Why not start out with paper ballots and hand count them?

Montgomery

November

1996

Numerous voting machines shut down and votes were unrecorded.

The machine software was not certified by the state and company programmers were making changes to the software right up to Election Day.

The county then sold the Microvote machines to Mecklenberg County, North Carolina. They didn't work there either.

MicroVote

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 124)

After the election Mircovote had the temerity to sue Montgomery County for $1.8 million claiming malfunctions were somehow the county's fault. That suit was thrown out. The county then sued Microvote and affiliates and was awarded over $1 million in damages by a jury.

May 16,

2006

primary

Primary had to be run with no central tabulating software when WinEDS system proved so unstable, prone to crashing, and possible manipulation that it failed the state certification in late March.

Sequoia

VoteTrustUSA

 

Philadelphia

May 16,

2006

primary

Hundreds of machines failed election day despite extensive experience on the system by poll workers and other officials.

Guardian

Danaher ELECTronic 1242

(aka Shouptronic 1242)

VoteTrustUSA

 


 

Rhode Island

Top

    Table 31: Rhode Island counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Pawtucket

November

2006

Disabled voters find AutoMARK difficult to use. Ballot-scanners don't accept the ballots.

ES&S

Pawtucket Times

November 15, 2006


 

South Carolina

Top

    Table 32: South Carolina counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Greenville

November

2006

The county had problems with five of 1,000 iVotronic voting machines. Machines had loose connections and power source problems.

ES&S

iVotronic

Tryon Daily Bulletin

County had to count by hand at least 600 absentee ballots that M100 optical scanners failed to count.

Kershaw

April

2005

Vote totals indicated 3,208 of District Two's 5,128 registered voters had cast ballots in the Republican and Democratic primaries. A manual recount proved only 768 votes were cast.

ES&S

The State, April 29, 2005

Race results were reversed by the fact that data cartridges had been read multiple times.

November

2006

Ballot programming error in the iVotronics. The machines were set up to prompt for two votes in a "vote-for-one" contest.

Chronicle Independent

November 20, 2006

Voting machines in Lugoff 1, 2, and 3 precincts incorrectly programmed to solicit and accept two votes out of three candidates when there was only one seat up for election.

Pickens

November

2002

Vote totals from two precincts couldn't be obtained due to computer problems.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 24).

York

(Rock Hill)

October 16

2001

Voting machines were programmed incorrectly in Rock Hill election, skipping hundreds of votes cast. In a number of precincts ballot-counting software ignored votes for council members causing omission of 11% of the votes cast for these races.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix.

In all, voting irregularities were found in seven of Rock Hill's 25 precincts.

November

2002

Software programming error caused 21,000 votes in commissioner of agriculture race to go uncounted.

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. v).

Hand recount of paper ballots was necessary to sort out problem.


 

South Dakota

Top

    Table 33: South Dakota counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Not given

November

2002

Voting machine found to be double-counting votes. Error blamed on "flawed chip."

ES&S

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 15).

Only ES&S was allowed to examine the chip.


 

Tennessee

Top

    Table 34: Tennessee counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Knox

(Knoxville)

November

1996

Software programming error lumped 40,000 city and non-city votes cast during early voting together.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Voters were outraged as error caused a ballot issue to fail in county-wide vote.

Shelby

(Memphis)

August

1998

In governor's race a software programming error began crediting votes to the wrong candidates. Computer cartridges containing 295 individual precinct results were taken to a central location because the scanner couldn't read them.

Diebold

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 17) and Appendix A (p. iii).

The system that was shut down had posted the incorrect results to newsrooms across the city. At least one TV station broadcast bogus results.

March

2000

Computer problems halted voting in all 19 early-voting sites during primary. Voting machine company had not provided paper ballot backups when required.

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 22) and Appendix.

Snafu affected about 13,000 voters who had to wait in long lines or come back later.

August

2006

Best evidence yet of electronic vote fraud.

Black Box Voting


 

Texas

Top

    Table 35: Texas counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Bexar

March

2006

Unforeseen technical delays caused panic among many precinct judges. Ballot machines were incorrectly programmed to shut down at 8 PM, not correct time of 7 PM. When precinct judges tried to collect the votes at 7 PM, the machines failed to comply and the judges "all panicked." They had to be told how to manually collect the data.

ES&S

iVotronic

San Antonio Express News

Another problem. Before judges sent in precinct' s ballot results electronically, they printed out the results on a narrow stream of paper so numbers could be verified.

The printouts were the length of buses. Judges called in, wondering why it was taking so long to print, with some complaining they were running out of paper.

Collin

November

2004

DRE locked up during voting at Rose Mary Haggar Elementary School and was taken out of service. Despite coaxing from technicians the machine would not divulge results from 63 voters.

Six days later the machine wouldn't budge despite the best attempts by experts from Diebold.

The machine's memory card to was then sent to Diebold laboratories in Canada so technicians there could attempt to extract the numbers. They reported that attempts were successful and that the results were finally in.

Diebold

eRiposte.com copied from Dallas Morning News

Collin County spent $2.7 million to buy 700 of the touch-screen machines in 2003.

Comal

November

2002

Uncanny coincidence of three upset victories by three Republican candidates tallying up exactly 18,181 votes each. No one thought it was weird enough to audit.

ES&S

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 (p. 20) and Appendix.

Greg Palast Best Democracy Money Can Buy (p.348)

Sludge report

Conversion to alphabet: 18181 18181 18181 — > ahaha ahaha ahaha

Dallas

(Dallas)

November

1998

Software programming error caused new, $3.8 million high-tech ballot system to miss 41,015 votes. The system refused to count votes from 98 precincts, telling itself they had already been counted.

ES&S

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Operators and election officials didn't realize they had a problem until after they' d released "final" totals that omitted one in eight votes.

October-

November

2002

18 machines were pulled out of action because they registered Republican when voters pushed Democrat. Some voters who wanted to vote a straight Democratic Party ticket instead had votes assigned to all Republican candidates, the court filing says.

Judge Karen Johnson, a Republican, quashed an effort to investigate the accuracy of the tally.

Diebold

Dallas Morning News

Independent News & Media

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. v). "We don't know if we lost 10 votes, 100 votes, 1,000 or 10,000," said Susan Hays, Dallas Democratic Party chair. She said the problem was with voting equipment not county personnel. "This is a vendor's problem," she said. "They need to prove to us that voters' votes are being cast as they want."

Fort Bend

November

2006

Machines were delivered to the wrong precincts, delaying many local elections.

 

VotersUnite

Guadalupe

November

1996

A voting computer counted more votes in the presidential election than the number of ballots cast. A problem with the software was discovered before the election but was not fixed.

Business Records Corp.

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. ii)

Sequoia bought Business Record's optical scan vote tabulation business as part of 1997 Dept. of Justice anti-trust action with ES&S — under licensing agreement, both companies used the same equipment and software.

Harris

(Houston)

November

2003

Hundreds of voters were turned away from polls when poll workers could not get the eSlate voting machines to work.

Hart Intercivic

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 124)

Problem blamed on poor training of poll workers.

Jefferson

March

2006

About 5,000 votes were counted twice. The on-site technical supervisor provided by ES&S did not know how to handle a problem that arose with one of the counting machines.

ES&S

KBTV 4

As is common, the problem was blamed on "human error" but ES&S nonetheless paid for the recount.

McLennan

1996

Republican

primary

runoff

One precinct tallied about 800 votes although only 500 ballots were ordered.

Some ballots may have been counted twice.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Even with a 60% error rate that was unexplained the Republican party chairman used the results.

Montgomery

2002

Primary

Congressional candidate Van Brookshire wasn't worried when he looked at the vote tabulation and saw a zero next to his name. He was unopposed in the District 2 primary and assumed the Elections Administrator's Office hadn't found it necessary to display his vote. He was surprised to learn the next day that a computer glitch had given all of his votes to U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, who was unopposed for the nomination for another term in District 8.

ES&S

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

A retabulation was paid for by ES&S who had made the programming mistake.

The mistake was undetected despite mandatory testing before and after early voting.

Nacogdoches

November

2006

Eight eSlate machines malfunctioned on election day. One broke down while a voter was using it.

Hart Intercivic

eSlate

VotersUnite Nov. 12, 2006

Voters strongly preferred paper ballots that had to be hand counted.

Potter

March

2006

Problem with software that merged electronic and paper ballot results encountered and that delayed vote tally.

ES&S

iVotronic

Amarillo Globe News

Amarillo Globe News

Election results delayed for 19 hours.

Robertson

March

2006

Election officials blamed software glitches and mechanical problems for delay in tabulating ballots on election night.

The "counter" — the machine designed to count absentee ballots also broke.

ES&S

TheEagle.com

Software used to tabulate the results had problems with data from certain precincts where Republicans and Democrats voted in separate locations.

Scurry

November

2002

Poll workers got suspicious about landslide victory for two Republican commissioner candidates. Told that a "bad chip" was to blame, they had a new computer chip flown in. They also counted the votes by hand and found that Democrats had won by wide margins, overturning the election.

Optical scanner

Greg Palast Best Democracy Money Can Buy (p.348)

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

Smith

November

2006

Central tabulating computer failed election night. Technician removed hard drive and installed it in another computer that was used to tally the votes.

ES&S

Tyler Morning Telegraph

November 19, 2006

County elections administrator, Paula Patterson, said, "Computers and other equipment can fail occasionally."

Tarrant

(Fort Worth)

March

2006

Machines recorded 100,000 more votes than were cast because of programming error.

Hart Intercivic

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Officials claimed votes were added equally for both parties.

November

2006

Machines switched Democratic votes for governor to the Republican incumbent Rick Perry, and some machines left off ballot initiatives or entire races in Fort Worth,

VotersUnite

Webb

March

2006

Equipment used to upload data from DREs wasn't programmed correctly

ES&S

iVotronic

San Antonio Express News

Williamson

November

2006

Software initially counted ~91,000 total ballots while voter sign-in sheets recorded ~84,500 voters. Recount showed some precincts counted twice and 84,795 signatures on sign-in sheets but only 84,419 ballots were counted in final results.

iVotronic machines counted every vote three times making the initial reported vote total about 6,500 more than the actual total. Fortunately most votes in the county were cast on paper ballots.

ES&S

iVotronic

Hill Country News

Don Blakely, ES&S sales manager, reported communication between software company and the Williamson County elections staff was lacking.

There were problems as well with ballots cast in early voting. Election administrator resigned.

News.com Nov. 16, 2006

American Statesman

November 15, 2006


 

Utah

Top

    Table 36: Utah counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Salt Lake

(Salt Lake City)

1998

1,413 votes never showed up in the total in city election. Programming error caused a batch of ballots not to count, even though they had been run through the machine like all the others.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix

When the 1,413 missing votes were counted, they reversed the election.

Utah

November

2004

Programming glitch in card counter dropped 33,000 ballots from the totals — all of them straight-party ballots.

Diebold

Brad Blog copied from article in Salt Lake Tribune November 13, 2004.

Salt Lake Tribune — January 25, 2005

November 2006

Without understanding differences in database formats county IT personnel used current version to program DRE memory cards and a backup version to program the memory card encoders. The formats were slightly different and ballot cards could not be encoded.

Daily Herald, Nov. 22, 2006

"That mismatch prevented a ballot from being called up on the touchscreen voting machines," said Diebold spokesman David Bear. "Apparently, the county officials didn't test the system before using it, or the mismatch would have been detected." Bear is good for excuses but not usability. Voters were left waiting in long lines, and some were turned away from the polls.


 

Virginia

Top

    Table 37: Virginia counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Fairfax

2003

Election officials referred to the voting machines as a "technological and procedural failure" and the machines inability to record votes was "mind boggling."

Advanced Voting Solutions

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 121)

Hampton city

November

2005

Voters said they had to try several times to select his name on the touch screen, but the box for a write-in candidate was highlighted instead.

 

 

Henrico

(Richmond)

February

2004

An eSlate machine shut down without explanation and voters had to cast their votes on paper ballots.

Hart Intercivic

Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 124)

Isle of Wright

2006

Frozen voting machine prevented election officials from transmitting results to a state database.

Sequoia

 

Norfolk

(Norfolk)

November

1999

Machines showed totals of zero but votes had been cast.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A.

Edward O' Neal, Electoral Board vice chairman, said, "Somehow, they lost their ability to count the votes."


 

Washington

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    Table 38: Washington counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

King

(Seattle)

November

1990

Malfunction caused voting computers to lose more than 14,000 votes. Individual ballots were counted but not the votes contained on them. The computer program didn't catch the problem, nor did any of the election officials.

 

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix (p. i).

A Democratic candidate happened to notice the discrepancy after the election was over, and he demanded an investigation. Miscounts were sporadic and thus hard to spot.

September 2004

Internal audit finds a log which records a 3 hour deletion.

 

BlackBoxVoting

Snohomish

(Everett)

November

2002

Problem not found until February 2003.

If there was any doubt that Republicans were right to ask for a recount of some absentee ballots from the general election it was erased by one sobering number: 21.5% of the ballots cast in 28 selected precincts were not counted by the optical scanners.

Problem was attributed to a faulty "read head" on each of two optical scanners that failed to read ballots marked with blue ink.

Sequoia

Optical scanner

Black Box Voting

Chapter 2 and Appendix A (p. vi-vii)

The Auditor's Office recounted 116,837 absentee ballots after county officials discovered that the optical scan ballot-counting machines had miscounted.

The machines had been tested for blue ink on ballots before the election.

Thurston

November

1996

Inexplicable undervote of 11.5% in hotly-contested congressional race, twice the undervote in any other race on ballot.

 

Black Box Voting

Appendix A (p. ii)

Yakima

October

2005

During hand recount of ballots it was discovered that 24 properly marked ballots had been counted as undervotes and had not been tallied.

Hart recommends the scanner be cleaned after every 8 hours of use. Impractical with polls open 12 hours.

Hart Intercivic

Ballot Now optical scan system, using Kodak i800 Series Scanner

VoteTrustUSA

Investigation by Hart InterCivic revealed that 24 ballot images contained a white vertical line spanning the entire length of the ballot. The line ran through the left portion of all option boxes in the 4th column of each ballot and was ascribed to dirt on the scanner.


 

West Virginia

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    Table 39: West Virginia counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Fayette

November

2006

Programming in M100 scanners tabulated paper ballots incorrectly. Two precincts where iVotronics were used required manual override and votes of 110 people had to be manually reentered race-by-race.

ES&S

M100 scanners

iVotronic

Register Herald Nov. 8, 2006

Correcting the tallies changed the margins in several races.

Marshall

November

2006

Software error prevented tabulation of the results in a recount.

ES&S

VotersUnite.org

Marshall County first county to conduct a recount since electronic voting instituted in West Virginia.


 

Wisconsin

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    Table 40: Wisconsin counties where problems with electronic voting have been reported.

County

Year

Problems

Equipment

Manufacturer

Comments

Reference

Milwaukee

September

2006

Different ballot sizes used for different voting systems.

Tabulators added all ballots cast at a polling place when 2 or more precincts at same location.

Optech Eagle in wards 258, 259, and 265 displayed 586 total ballots cast for the three wards, printed 576 total ballots, and poll books show 588 ballots distributed to electors

Blended system of ES&S AutoMark and BRC/ES&S/ Sequoia Optech Eagle IIIP scanners.

Vote Trust USA

Taylor

(Medford)

November

2005

Four and a half months after election a consulting firm discovered optical scanners were programmed incorrectly, failing to account for partisan elections.

That failure meant that the votes of everyone who voted straight ticket were not counted. In all, about 600 of 2,256 ballots cast, about 27% of the votes, were not counted.

ES&S

Optical scanners

Marshfield News-Herald, March 12, 2005

Medford and Taylor County officials have been told by ES&S that the city will be reimbursed for the costs of setting up the vote-counting machine in the fall because the program was faulty. A spokeswoman said the company takes full responsibility for the error.

Waukesha

September

2006

Computer glitches, inoperable and incompatible equipment, and other problems. Data were recorded in wrong column for some returns.

Two villages use ES&S while rest of the county uses Sequoia.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Vote Trust USA

One candidate was mistakenly posted as winner only later to be declared the loser.

Winnebago

September

2006

Blended system of AccuVote OS optical scanners and AccuVote TSx DRE's did not give integrated precinct vote totals as advertised.

Diebold

Vote Trust USA

Votes had to be hand counted and totaled. Apparently vote "accumulator" is vaporware.


 

Summary of commonly-observed problems with electronic voting machines

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The following summary observations are derived from the multitudinous failures documented above. These observations are by no means complete or authoritative but they do paint a very bleak picture for the honesty and integrity of our elections using current models of electronic voting machines.

General and problems with central tabulator

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• Outright fraud, sabotage, or gross incompetence (usually impossible to tell the difference).

• Absentee, early, and polling place votes not correctly or accurately merged, and "negative" votes entered.

• Computer identifies voter thus preventing secret ballot.

• Not enough machines provided in polling place (new variant on Chicago Rules of Election Fraud).

• No standard test for accuracy exists. ES&S only claims ±1%. Accuracy may not be any better than ±7%.

• Computers not properly tested or calibrated.

• Uncertified, untested, or wrong software installed.

• Audit logs incomplete or inaccurate. Sometimes due to insufficient storage media.

• Programming errors. Usually found when vote totals don't match poll book. No one has any way to discriminate between "programming errors" and deliberate fraud or sabotage.

Direct recording election or touch screen machines

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• Candidates and issues omitted from ballot on computer.

• In voting centers, or polling places with multiple precincts, voters are given wrong ballot style to vote on supposedly due to encoding errors by election judges.

• Same ballots counted two or more times.

• More ballots counted by computer than voters logged in poll book.

• Computer stops counting after a few thousand votes but voters keep voting on machine without any notice.

• Votes are logged but then disappear.

• Votes are never counted.

• Undervoting and overvoting not properly checked.

• Votes are given to different candidate than one selected by voter.

• Persistent rumors that if no candidate or issue selected machine gives vote to a default selection decided by programmer.

• Several candidates all receive exactly the same number of votes, e.g., 18,181 in Comal County, Texas.

• Straight party voting reverses parties, i.e., elector votes straight Democrat, votes are given to Republicans.

• Straight party votes not counted at all.

• Voting a straight party ticket can too easily result in undervote.

• Machines freeze, shutdown, reset, jam, or fail to boot up.

• Touch screens fail or lose calibration in high humidity.

• Uncertified, untested, or wrong software, firmware, and hardware installed.

• Memory cards fail or are "lost." (Data cartridges are easier to "lose" than ballot boxes)

• Computers not programmed correctly and may be reprogrammed during election.

• Machines programmed for ballots in one precinct end up in another.

Optical scanners

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• Marking devices, i.e., pencil or pen, wrong ink color (red ink or pencil usually not read by any scanner), gel inks vs. carbon inks, mark intensity, etc., on paper ballots not recognized and votes are not counted by scanner. For an excellent review of such problems see the Statement regarding the optical mark-sense tabulators in Maricopa County, Arizona by Prof. Douglas Jones.

• Scanner sensitivity not properly calibrated or tested prior to election.

• Scanners are difficult to calibrate and lose calibration during elections.

• Defects in scanner cause apparent overvoting and votes are not counted.

• Scanner heads and other components become dirty or scratched and introduce reading errors. For example, voters at home may use correction fluid on their ballot that may wipe off on the read head of the scanner, or food gets spilled on the ballot that transfers to the scanner. This is a particular problem with mail elections where tens or hundreds of thousands of ballots may be scanned with a single machine.

• Double-sided ballots not sufficiently opaque and marks on opposite side bleed through particularly if wrong marking instrument used.

• Overvoting rejection turned off (used to discriminate against minority voters).

• Candidates and issues omitted when ballot is scanned.

• Ballots with straight-party votes not counted correctly.

• Ballots don't fit scanner, or cannot be, or are not read by scanner.

• Ballots often jam due to high humidity.

• Computer identifies voter thus preventing secret ballot.

• Uncertified, untested, or wrong software, firmware, and hardware installed.

• Computers not programmed correctly and may be reprogrammed during election.

• Machines programmed for ballots in one precinct end up in another.

• Absentee or mail ballots have toner or ink transferred while folded and sacked for mailing and scanner reads smudge as vote or overvote.

• Fold in absentee or mail ballots read as vote or overvote.

• Dust and other spurious marks (often attributed to contact with other mail ballots) read as votes.

• Part of ballot becomes folded under in the stack and may jam scanner. Particular problem when attempting to use automatic feeder.

• Folds drag adjacent ballot into the scanner with automatic feeder.

• Ballot upside down can supposedly be handled but additional memory is required.

• Ripped or damaged ballots get caught on the next ballot or in the scanner.

• Bar code on ballot may be slightly damaged by spurious marks and the ballot rejected. This problem seems to happen unnecessarily considering that bar codes are very resilient in other applications.

All in all electronic voting systems don't exhibit the reliability and trustworthiness of a Game Boy toy. Yet we have been forced to put our most fundamental freedom in the hands of a few opportunistic vendors with no meaningful standards of accuracy, reliability, or usability.

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Last modified 6/14/09