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[ThatHawaiiGuy]

A Long History of Voting Irregularities

compiled by Bev Harris in her upcoming book Blackbox Voting
Bug list excerpts from the actual Diebold programming files:

• bug in VIBS causing Straight Party races not to work properly.

• problem with race stats results not being sent correctly.

• bug in BallotDLG when ballot with the votes appears after touching Start button or any where else on the screen couple of times.

• Fix bug with candidate totals

• Richard Miholic, a losing Republican candidate for alderman was told that he won. He was among 15 people in four races affected by ES&S vote-counting errors in the Chicago area.

• An Orange County California election computer made a 100 percent error. The Registrar of Voters Office initially announced that a school bond issue lost by a wide margin when in fact it was supported by a majority of the ballots cast. The error was due to a programmer reversing the “yes” and “no” answers in the software used to count the votes.

• According to the Wall Street Journal, in the year 2000, an ES&S optical scan machine in Allamakee County Iowa was fed 300 ballots and reported four million votes.

• A computer program that was specially enhanced to speed Kane County's election results to a waiting public did just that — unfortunately, it sped the wrong data. Voting totals for a referendum proposal said it had lost when it actually was approved. For some reason, software which worked earlier without a hitch waited until election night to get it wrong.

• In Polk County Florida, County Commissioner Marlene Duffy Young lost the election to Bruce Parker, but regained the seat after a court-ordered hand recount. After the recount, county commissioners unanimously voted to ask for a grand jury probe. Testifying were Todd Urosevich, a vice president with American Information Systems Inc., the company that sold the county its ballot-counting equipment. The machines had given the election to Parker (a Republican) but a hand recount revealed that Young (a Democrat) had won. Todd Urosevich said his machines were not responsible for the miscount.

• A grand jury was convened in Stanislaus County California to determine what caused computerized voting machines to misreport election results. The grand jury concluded that an ES&S computerized counting system miscalculated the votes for three propositions. A hand recount of the ballots resulted in Measure A, a state proposition, being reversed. ES&S machines had reported that it lost badly, but it had won. According to Karen Matthews, county clerk recorder and registrar of voters, the problem occurred because of a incorrect programming in the counting system produced by ES&S.

• In Union County, Florida a programming error caused machines to read 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes as entirely Republican. The vendor, ES&S, accepted responsibility for the incorrect programming.

• Among the problems outlined by the Democratic Party in the infamous Florida election in 2000: A faulty “memory card” in a polling machine, which counts and reports the tally by modem, resulted in a DeLand precinct's reporting that presidential candidate Al Gore had negative 16,022 votes. The computerized vote tally gave the Socialist Workers Party candidate almost 10,000 votes — about half the number he received nationwide.

• In Conroe, Texas congressional candidate Van Brookshire wasn't worried when he looked at the vote tabulation and saw a zero next to his name. After all, he was unopposed in the District 2 primary and he assumed that the Montgomery County 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. A retabulation was paid for by ES&S, the company that made the programming mistake. The mistake was undetected despite mandatory testing.

• In Tennessee, a computer snafu temporarily stopped the Shelby County vote count after generating wildly inaccurate results and forcing a second count that continued into the morning. State Sen. Roscoe Dixon huddled with other politicos around a single copy of the latest corrected election returns that quickly became dog-eared and riddled with circles and "X"s. “This system should have been checked,” Dixon said.

• Pamela Justice celebrated her re-election to the school board in Dysart, Arizona. But because of incorrect programming in the county's computer, the computer had failed to count 1,019 votes. When those votes were added in, Justice lost the election to her opponent, Nancy Harrower. “We did an accuracy test before election day and the computers worked fine,” said Karen Osborne, county elections director

• In a Salt Lake City Republican primary election, 1,413 votes never showed up in the total. A software programming error caused a batch of ballots not to count, even though they had been run through the machine like all the others. When the 1,413 missing votes were counted, it reversed the election

• 1971, Las Vegas Nevada — A precedent was set for seating a candidate challenging incorrect voting machine tallies. Machines declared Democrat Arthur Espinoza Republican to be the winner, but Hal Smith challenged the election when he determined that some votes had not been counted due to a faulty voting machine. After unrecorded votes were tallied, Smith was declared the winner.

• 1986, Atlanta, Georgia — Wrong candidate declared the winner. Incumbent Donn Peevy was running for state senator in the old District 48, which straddled Barrow and Gwinnett counties. The machines said he lost the election. After an investigation revealed that a Republican elections official had kept uncounted ballots in the trunk of his car, officials also admitted that a computerized voting program had miscounted. Peevy insisted on a recount. "When the count finished around 1 a.m., they walked into a room and shut the door,” recalls Peevy. “When they came out, they said 'Mr. Peevy, you won.' That was it. They never apologized. They never explained.

• 1994, New Orleans Louisiana — Voting machine tests performed and videotaped by candidate Susan Barnecker immediately after the election demonstrated that votes she cast for herself were electronically recorded for her opponent. This test was repeated several times with the same result. (The video footage of this incident can be seen on Dan Hopsicker’s documentary video The Big Fix, 2000, Mad Cow Productions).

• November, 1996, Bergen County, New Jersey — Democrats told Bergen County Clerk Kathleen Donovan to come up with a better explanation for mysterious swings in vote totals. 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, the Republican freeholder had beaten Guarino by about 7,000 votes as of the day after the election but the lead evaporated later. One candidate actually lost 1,600 votes during the counting. "How could something like that possibly happen?" Guarino asked. "Something is screwed up here."

• November 1996, Guadalupe County Texas — Officials discovered a voting computer counted more votes in the presidential election than the number of ballots cast.

• July 1996, Clark County Nevada — According to a Las Vegas Review-Journal article, 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." Reconfiguring a computer program that effects the tabulation of votes is prohibited without prior state verification.

• December 1997, Akron Ohio — Scrambled votes: Ed Repp won the election — no, cancel that, a software programming error was discovered — Repp actually lost. (Oh look, twins!) Another programming error in the same election resulted in incorrect vote totals for the Portage County Board election. (Make that triplets!) Turns out the bond referendum results were wrong too.

• August 1997, Oklahoma — Computers gave the election to the wrong candidates, twice. The private company hired to handle the election for the Seminole Nation announced results for tribal chief and assistant chief, then decided that their computer had counted the absentee ballots twice, so they posted a second set of results. Tribal officials then counted the votes by hand, producing yet a third, and this time official, set of results. Each of the three sets of results had a different set of candidates moving on to the runoff election.

• 1984 Tucson, Arizona — 826 legitimate ballots were discarded in Oro Valley due to a computer error. The error wasn’t discovered until after the deadline for counting them.

• 1996 Tucson, Arizona — Software programming mixed up the votes cast for two Republican Supervisor candidates.

• 1997 Tucson, Arizona — More than 8,300 votes in the City Council race were initially left uncounted because of defective ballots, which were provided by the voting machine company.

• 1997 Tucson, Arizona — The city had to hand-count 79,000 votes because of a manufacturing defect in the ballots, provided by the voting machine company.

• 1998 Tucson, Arizona — 9,675 votes were missed in the tabulation. After canvassing, officials realized that no votes were recorded for 24 precincts even though voter rolls indicated thousands had voted at those polling places. Global Elections Systems tried to figure out why the computer failed to record the votes.

• July 1998, Cobb County Georgia — On-the-spot reprogramming was done (after votes were cast) because the computer would not read any votes cast for state representative Sharon Cooper. "The computer couldn't find her votes at all." said Paul Ruth, applications manager of the county's information services department.

• November 1998 Franklin County, Ohio — One candidate was incorrectly credited with 14,967 votes; another received 6,889 in error. Congress Pryce and Kasich gained 13,427 votes and 9,784 votes, respectively, after election officials hand-checked vote totals in 371 machines that were affected by a software programming error.

• November 1998, Washoe County Nevada — A breathtaking number of snafus in the Washoe County registrar's office caused candidates in Reno to liken the election to the 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

• September 1998, Kansas City Kansas — Republican John Bacon, a staunch conservative, celebrated a resounding victory over moderate Republican Dan Neuenswander. Two weeks later Neuenswander learned that the race was actually dead even, which should have qualified him for a recount except that the deadline had passed. No one offered any explanation why it was 24 votes not 3,018 that separated Dan from John

• August 1998, Memphis Tennessee — In the governor’s race, a software programming error in Shelby County began generating inaccurate results. Votes went to the wrong candidates. Computer cartridges containing 295 individual precinct results were taken to a central location, because the scanner couldn’t read the cartridges. The system that was shut down was posting the incorrect results to newsrooms across the city that had computer links to the data. At least one television station broadcast the bogus results. Which brings up a question: Why were newspaper and TV hooked directly up to computerized voting machines?

• November 1999, Onondaga County — Computers gave the election to the wrong candidate, then gave it back. Bob Faulkner, a political newcomer, went to bed Tuesday night confident he helped complete a 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.

• November, 2000 San Francisco, California — 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.

• April 2002, Johnson County Kansas — Johnson County's new Diebold touch screen machines, proclaimed a success on election night, did not work as well as originally believed. Incorrect vote totals were discovered in six races, three of them contested, leaving county election officials scrambling to make sure the unofficial results were accurate. Johnson County Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt that internal checks revealed that the system had under- and over-reported hundreds of votes. Schmidt said the voting machines worked fine, they just tabulated wrong. "The machines performed terrifically," said Robert J. Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems. "The anomaly showed up on the reporting part." The problem, however, was so perplexing that Schmidt asked the Board of Canvassers to order a hand re-count to make sure the results were accurate. Unfortunately, the touch screen machines did away with the ballots, so the only way to do a hand recount is to have the machine print its internal data page by page. Diebold tried to re-create the error in hopes of correcting it. "I wish I had an answer," Urosevich said. In some cases, vote totals changed dramatically.

• November 2002, Palm Beach Florida — A Florida woman, a former news reporter, discovered that votes were being tabulated in 644 Palm Beach precincts, but only 643 precincts have any eligible voters. An earlier court case in Florida found the same discrepancy, and the reason for it was never satisfactorily explained.

• August 2002, Clay County Kansas — A squeaker — no, a landslide — oops, we reversed the totals — and about those absentee votes, make that 72-19, not 44-47. Software programming errors, sorry. Oh, and reverse that election, we announced the wrong winner — The machines said Jerry Mayo ran a close race but lost, garnering 48 percent of the vote, but a hand recount revealed Mayo won by a landslide, earning 76 percent of the vote.

• September 2002, Union County, Florida — A programming error caused machines to read 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes as entirely Republican.

• November 2002, Dallas Texas — When 18 machines were pulled out of action in Dallas because they registered Republican when voters pushed Democrat, the judge quashed an effort to investigate the accuracy of the tally.

• November 2002, Scurry County Texas — When Scurry County poll workers got suspicious about a landslide victory for Republicans, they had a new computer chip flown in and also counted the votes by hand — and found out that Democrats actually won by wide margins, overturning the election.

• March 2002, Medley Florida — Voting machines gave the election to the wrong candidate. The cause was attributed to a software programming error by voting machine technician. County Elections Supervisor David Leahy said he was concerned because the computer did not raise any red flags, and humans had to spot the error.

• November 2002, Baldwin County Alabama — No one at ES&S can explain the mystery votes that changed after polling places had closed, flipping the election from the Democratic winner to a Republican in the Alabama Governor's race. "Something happened. I don't have enough intelligence to say exactly what," said Mark Kelley, of ES&S. Baldwin County results showed that Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state of Alabama. All the observers went home. The next morning, however, 6,300 of Siegelman's votes inexplicably disappeared, and the election was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was requested, but denied.

• November 2002, North Carolina — Computer misprogramming overturned the result: In North Carolina, a mistake in the computer program caused vote-counting machines to skip over several thousand party-line votes, both Republican and Democratic. Fixing the error turned up 5,500 more votes and reversed the election.

• November 2002, Gretna Nebraska — This crushing defeat never happened: 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. Responsibility for the errors was attributed to ES&S, the Omaha company that provided the ballots and the machines. 97

• November 2002, South Carolina — A software programming error of 55 percent: In South Carolina, and it caused more than 21,000 votes in the squeaker-tight race for S.C. commissioner of agriculture to be uncounted

• February 2003, Everett, Washington —If there was any doubt that Republicans were right to ask for a recount of some Snohomish County absentee ballots from November's general election, it was erased by one sobering number: 21.5 percent of the ballots cast in 28 selected precincts were not counted. The Snohomish County Auditor's Office recounted 116,837 absentee ballots Thursday after county officials discovered that the optical scan ballot-counting machines had miscounted

"Gimme five (electoral) commissioners, and I'll make them voting machines sing `Home Sweet Home.'" — Gov. Earl Long, Louisiana



Sources and links:
Return to Summary

View the Kara Sinkule email here

And the contradictions by all involved - Michael Barnes (Kara's boss), Dr. Williams, and Diebold themselves

Black Box Voting web site

Who are we?

Contact information:
Denis Wright
[e-mail]
404 932-8870

Contact the author: Pamela Troy

http://workersrighttovote.org/more.htm