-
1968 - Following widely
publicized problems with punch cards in the 1968
election, IBM withdrew from the election machine
business.
http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/july01/July01_VTP_%20Voting_Report_Entire.pdf (Unfortunately,
there's no documentation in this report. We'll keep searching.)
-
1970s-1980s
Ohio -
The Cincinnati Bell-FBI
scandal: Leonard Gates, a Cincinnati Bell employee for 23 years, testified that in
the late 1970's and 80's, that the FBI assisted telephone companies with
hacking into mainframe election computers in cities across the country. See:
http://www.thelandesreport.com/Donsanto.htm
-
1970 Florida - Dade County. This
is the election that started the Collier brothers on a decades-long
investigation of computer vote-rigging and the major news networks complicity.
On election day the networks claimed that the courthouse computer broke down.
Before the breakdown candidate Ken Collier had 31% of the vote. 20 minutes
later, the network reported that Collier had only 16%. The Colliers claim that
election night computer breakdowns, followed by a sharp drop-off in votes for
certain candidates, was pattern repeating itself across the country. They
later alleged in court that three University of Miami computer professors
conspired with election officials and news network officials to rig elections
in Florida. "One voting machine was used to accurately project (100% of the
time) the entire election involving some 40 races and more than 250
candidates."
http://www.votescam.com/frame.html (VoteScam: The Stealing of America)
-
1970 South Carolina - "In the
first election I witnessed in South Carolina (it was 1970, I believe), a
voting machine broke down in one of the largest black precincts in Charleston.
It was in the middle of the morning rush. There were no replacement machines
available, and while a repairman worked on the problem for a couple of hours,
several hundred African-Americans eventually left the precinct without getting
the chance to vote. I became righteously indignant, as I often was in those
days, but my Charleston friends were philosophical. It happens every election,
they told me. And so it did. Never the same precinct. Never the same time of
day. Never the same problem with the machine. But for many elections
afterward, somewhere in Charleston on election day, a voting machine in a
black precinct would break down for an hour or two. Once is an accident. Twice
is incredibly bad luck. Three times or more is a plan."
http://www.safero.org/columns/unwrapped34.html
-
1972 Florida - Dade County. The
election was a repeat of 1970 (see above) although Ken Collier was not a
candidate this time.
http://www.votescam.com/frame.html (VoteScam: The Stealing of America)
-
1974 Florida - Dade County. The
Collier brothers discover that the Printomatic voting machines contain
pre-printed vote tabulations. Thousands of precinct workers walk out in
protest, but the news media plays down the story. Both local authorities (Dade
County attorney Janet Reno) and the Department of Justice under current
election crimes chief, Craig DonSanto, refuse to investigate even though there
have long been widespread rumors of rampant election fraud in Dade.
http://www.votescam.com/frame.html (VoteScam: The Stealing of America)
-
1980 Florida - History repeats
itself again and again and again. "Undervotes"--the failure of votes to
register on a voted ballot--occurred on about 10,000 ballots in Palm Beach
County this year, where Vice President Al Gore has strong support. In 1988, in
MacKay's four Democratic stronghold counties, there were 210,000 people who
voted for president but did not vote in the U.S. Senate race.
In a comparable U.S. Senate race in a
presidential-election year--1980--in the same four counties, three out of
every 100 presidential voters did not vote for senator.
http://www.notablesoftware.com/Press/Dugger1.html
- 1980 Utah - Salt Lake County. A last minute
breakdown of one of Salt Lake County's two ballot reading computers caused a
delay in production of the tally. No county totals were produced for two
hours, and the final tally was produced at 5:39 a.m. the following morning.
The situation was reported in an article in the Salt Lake Tribune on
Nov. 6, 1980.
-
1980 West Virginia - Following the
general election of November, 1980, three defeated candidates charged gross
violations of election laws in Kanawha County, the county in which Charleston
is located. According to an article on June 2, 1981 in the Charleston
Gazette [42], Darlene Kay Dotson, an employee in the office of the County
Clerk, had stated in a deposition taken for Underwood's suit that the ballots
from the election in question had been run through the computer on the day
after the election to get "precinct-by-precinct reports." ...Appeals of the
dismissal were similarly dismissed, and the U.S. Supreme Court announced on
February 24, 1987 its refusal to hear the case.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1982 Indiana - Elkhart County, General
election. A major source of problems in the election was the apparent failure
to properly test the equipment prior to use. The losing candidates charged
that no test of the automatic tabulating equipment was undertaken five days
prior to the election, as required by the Indiana statute then in effect, and
that only a superficial test was done at about 4 p.m. on election day. The
losing candidates' case, brought before the U.S. District Court for the
Northern District of Indiana, named the local board officials as defendants.
It was alleged in the pleadings in that case that the computer system was not
tested, that there was no error-free test of the system before the official
count, that there was no actual count of the ballots and that the alleged
count and certification of the vote count was fraudulent. The pleadings and
briefs further stated that the control cards for the operation of the program
were altered by the vendor representative during the counting, and that the
acts by the election officials were willful, wanton, reckless and oppressive.
However, the court entered a summary judgment on Feb. 21, 1985 against the
losing candidates because, in the court's opinion, there were no allegations
of any "willful conduct which undermines the organic processes by which
candidates are elected" (language of an important precedent, Hennings v.
Grafton)
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
-
1983-87 Illinois - "Saltman’s
1988 report cited an extensive series of tests of the computer counting
systems used in Illinois from 1983-87 which tested tens of thousands of
ballots instead of the usual three or four dozen used in most pre-election
tests. In the Illinois test series, it was discovered that significant errors
in the computers’ basic counting instructions were found in 20% of the tests.
In 1988, Michael Harty, the Illinois director of voting
systems and standards, pointed out that these gross "tabulation-program
errors" would not have been caught by election authorities and lamented to the
New Yorker. "At one point, we had
tabulation errors in 28% of the systems tested, and nobody cared"."
http://www.ecotalk.org/Pandora'sBlackBox.htm / The Illinois State Board of
Elections, Division of Voting Systems, under the direction of Michael L. Harty,
has undertaken tests of vote-counting computer systems. Between 1983 and 1987,
the division conducted 48 tests of the automatic tabulating equipment and
computer programs in 41 election jurisdictions. The tests have involved
anywhere from 1,000 to 65,000 test ballots. The division found apparent
computer program tabulation errors in 11 of the election jurisdictions tested.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1984 Florida - Palm Beach County . Following
the general election, David Anderson, defeated candidate for Property
Appraiser of Palm Beach County, sued to contest the election of his opponent
Rebecca Walker. [72] Anderson asked that the Court order a hand recount of the
ballots, or a hand recount of at least several precincts in that election. The
issues on which Anderson sued included handling of the ballots, precinct
procedures for signing in voters, ballot secrecy, counting of punch card
ballots, and possible manipulation of the computer program.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1984 Illinois - Effingham County, General
Election: A county-level office was not being tabulated in five precincts,
though votes were assigned to the office.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1984 Illinois - Jackson County, General
Election: A translation error between precinct returns and the summary report
caused the summary report to fail to properly reflect the precinct sum totals
for certain candidates.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1984 Illinois - LaSalle County, General
Election: The straight party vote was not being tabulated for all candidates
in a party. In addition, when an overvote occurred in the straight party
column and also in an individual candidate's punches on the same ballot, the
candidates involved actually lost a vote, i.e., had their vote totals reduced
by a vote (instead of simply being denied a vote).
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1984 Illinois - Grundy County, General Primary
Election: Forty-seven percent of the precincts had one or more of the
following types of errors: (1) the assignment of the wrong county board
districts in the precincts, (2) the deletion of candidates in precincts, (3)
the incorrect assignment of candidates to precincts, (4) assignment of only 2
vote for each vote cast, and (5) incorrect totals of precinct votes on the
summary report for several candidates.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1984 Illinois - Rock Island County, General
Primary Election: Two votes for each vote cast were being tabulated for a
candidate. In addition, the "no" votes on a proposition were not being
counted. Further, the summary report totals did not properly reflect precinct
sum totals for several candidates.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1984 Illinois - Jackson County, General
Election: Column binary punching appeared to cause severe tabulation delay. In
addition, the card reader stopped occasionally during the tabulation of a
precinct. When this condition occurred, the results already obtained had to be
erased and all the ballots for the precinct had to be retabulated. The cause
of this difficulty could not be immediately ascertained.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1984 Illinois - Will County, General Election:
During the system test, the card reader was jammed twice by ballots. The
ballots involved were almost completely destroyed in the process.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
-
1984 Maryland - On November 8, two
days after the Tuesday, November 6, 1984 general election, and in accordance
with the rules of the Maryland State Administrative Board of Election Laws (SABEL),
voted punch card ballots from two districts of Carroll County were taken to a
neighboring county, Frederick, to be rerun on an independently-managed system.
It was clear from these reruns that one of the computers used was in error in
determining the outcome of a contest between Wayne Cogswell and incumbent T.
Edward Lippy, for Carroll County School Board. Manual counts of the votes on
ballots from both Frederick and Carroll Counties showed that the Carroll
County computer was the one that was incorrect. The initial but unofficial
count, made public on the evening of the election, had incorrectly indicated
that Cogswell was the winner. An investigation, undertaken the next day
(November 9) by Craig Jester, a county computer program contractor,
demonstrated that a wrong utility computer program for reading the ballot
cards had been used. According to a July 11, 1985 story by Chris Guy in the
Carroll County Times referring to the court-ordered recount, "...defeated
candidate Wayne Cogswell had verification that use of an incorrect computer
program caused a nearly 13,000-vote mistake in the unofficial totals released
election night."
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1985 Illinois - Moline, Consolidated Municipal
and Township Election. The following report is primarily based on an
article in Illinois Issues, November, 1985, that was republished in a
newsletter of the National Center for Policy Alternatives. [66] In this
election on April 2, 1985, the failure of a card reader to read correctly
caused a losing aldermanic candidate for Moline City Council to be put into
office. The error was not rectified until about three months later.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1985 Illinois - Morgan County, Consolidated
Election: No straight party votes registered for the candidates of a party.
However, this did not affect the individual candidate totals.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1985 Illinois - Peoria County, Consolidated
Election: The computer program misassigned straight party punches for a
candidate for township supervisor. The candidate received a tally from a
straight party punch for the opposite party but failed to receive a tally from
the straight party punch of his own party.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1985 Illinois - Sangamon County, Consolidated
Election: The computer program would not accept ballots with proper ballot
style identifiers. This error was not discovered by the test previously run by
the local jurisdiction. In addition, ballots in precincts with more than one
ballot style did not contain different style identifiers. Thus, it would not
have been possible to separate the voted ballots of the different styles.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1985 Illinois - Logan County, Consolidated
Primary Election: Tabulation errors occurred when precincts were split by ward
boundaries. When the same punch position was assigned to different candidates
in different wards in the same precinct, votes for one of the candidates were
not tallied by the computer program.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
-
1985 Texas - 03/26/1987 The Dallas
Morning News The Texas secretary of state's office has decided to assign a
computer expert and a lawyer as inspectors for the Dallas city elections on
April 4 to check the county's computerized tabulating equipment. A spokesman
for the office said Wednesday that the assignments were made after a briefing
by the state attorney general's office, which has been investigating
allegations of vote fraud in the tabulating system used in the 1985 mayor's
race. Dallas County District Attorney John Vance said Monday that the attorney
general's office has asked his staff for assistance in the investigation,
which centers on the reliability of the vote-counting machines and whether
they are vulnerable to fraud through subtle changes in computer programs.
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html also in
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1986 Arizona - Maricopa County. A clerical
error that would have interchanged votes for the two major parties in this
primary election was caught during testing. Pre-punches (ballot style
identifiers) were incorrectly specified, and if the errors had not been
caught, votes in the primary contests in each party would have been assigned
to the other party during tallying. Poor communication between the county data
processing department and the election administration contributed to the
problem. A well-designed testing process caught the error, so that ballot
counting during the actual election was not affected.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
-
1986 Georgia 11/07 - Atlanta
Journal Constitution Computer troubles have been blamed for ballot
discrepancies in a race that state Sen. Donn Peevy (D-Gwinnett) lost by eight
votes. Frances Duncan, director of the state Election Division in the
secretary of state's office, said Thursday a partial recount showed 400 fewer
ballots cast in the Cates D precinct, 70 more ballots cast in the Dacula
precinct, and 44 more ballots cast in the Lawrenceville precinct. The recount
was started Wednesday night at the request of the Republican victor, former
Lawrenceville Mayor Steve Pate, but was halted when the discrepancies
appeared, said county Elections Superintendent Lloyd Harris. Harris blamed the
problem on the computer used to recount the votes. He said an official from a
California computer firm will fly to Georgia on Monday to make necessary
program changes, and the recount won't be completed until early next week.
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html
- 1986 Illinois - Elkhart County. Following the
1986 general election, a State-mandated recount was undertaken that included
ballots from Elkhart County. In this recount, directed by Dean David Link of
the Notre Dame Law School, it was discovered that the computer program used to
count ballots in Elkhart County was not counting correctly according to
Indiana law.
ttp://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1986 Illinois - Whiteside County, General
Primary Election: The system tabulated votes on ballots that contained invalid
security codes (ballot style identifiers).
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1986 Illinois - Pulaski County, General
Primary Election: The principal disk that contained the vote-tallying program
failed to operate for the system test. The duplicate (backup) disk was
employed. The principal disk operated correctly for the public test. No reason
for the problem was discovered.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1986 Nebraska - "Back when (Chuck) Hagel first
ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled
voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the
general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory
against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the
November election." According to Bev Harris of
www.blackboxvoting.com,
Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black
communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first
Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.Six years later Hagel
ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a
landslide. As his
hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in
the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That
represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska." What
Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were
counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company
affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.
"This is a big story, bigger than Watergate ever was," said Hagel's Democratic
opponent in the 2002 Senate race, Charlie Matulka. "They say Hagel shocked the
world, but he didn't shock me."
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm
- 1986 Ohio - Stark County. An unprecedented
court-ordered "audit" (hand recount) of a Stark County computer recount in a
county commissioners primary contest again named as winner the candidate who
had apparently won in the official results of the May 6, 1986 primary but lost
in the computer recount. The "audit" revealed a computer program error that
permitted over 100 invalid punchcard ballots to be counted in the recount.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1986 Oklahoma - Oklahoma County In the general
election difficulties perceived by an independent group of local observers
involved, among other items, the operability of the precinct-located,
mark-sense computers, and the anomalous numbers of counted ballots that were
reported. The county signed a contract to purchase the mark-sense
vote-counting equipment in the summer of 1984. During the November 4, 1986
general election, the number of non-processed ballots was over 2% in a
significant number of precincts. According to State rules, the county Board of
Elections "has the authority" [68] (but is not required) to recount precincts
with over 2% non-processed ballots. The county board has used its discretion
in selecting particular precincts for reprocessing. Reprocessing, if done at
all, is done on the county's central computer. Not all precincts with over 2%
non-processed ballots were reprocessed in the November, 1986 general election.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1987 Illinois - City of Chicago, Consolidated
General Election: The system test indicated an approximate 3% failure rate of
program chips. The chips were improperly programmed or "burned." The
malfunction would have been identified during the public test.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
- 1987 Illinois - Boone County, Consolidated
Primary Election: Due to substantial ballot quality defects, a system test
could not be executed. New test ballots were ordered.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachines-SaltmanReport.htm
-
1988 Florida - History repeats itself again and again and
again. "Undervotes"--the failure of votes to
register on a voted ballot--occurred on about 10,000 ballots in Palm Beach
County this year, where Vice President Al Gore has strong support. In 1988, in
MacKay's four Democratic stronghold counties, there were 210,000 people who
voted for president but did not vote in the U.S. Senate race. In a comparable
U.S. Senate race in a presidential-election year--1980--in the same four
counties, three out of every 100 presidential voters did not vote for senator;
in 1988, 14 of every 100 did not. In the entire state of Florida, excluding
the four MacKay counties, fewer than one of 100 presidential
voters--25,000--were not recorded as also voting in the Senate race. Three of
the MacKay counties in 1988 are among Gore's big four recount counties. MacKay
believed "very strongly" that the Senate election was stolen from him. He
suspected, as a reason for the vote drop-off, the use, in the questioned
counties, of a ballot layout that crowded the Senate race onto the bottom of
the same page with the presidential race. The voting electorate for president
dropped to 86% for the Senate, then jumped back up to 97% for secretary of
state. Suspecting, too, "a problem in the [computerized vote-counting]
software," MacKay asked that his campaign be permitted to examine it in five
counties, but was refused on grounds that it was the secret property of the
election-business companies. "A damned outrage," he said of this.
http://www.notablesoftware.com/Press/Dugger1.html MacKay's campaign "late"
polls had him ahead by 5-9%, according to Dugger in APR Reporter - Vol. 16,
NO. 3
-
1995
Louisiana - Republican Susan Bernecker, a popular first-time challenger for
Jefferson Parish Council went down to defeat by a 33% to 58% margin. "In all
of the 54 precincts the percentages were in the same one third / two third
range – even in ones that I didn’t get out and pound the pavement".
She cites another female candidate in the Orleans Parish
who got 33% of the vote in every precinct. After the defeat, her suspicions
aroused, Bernecker and a producer friend went down to the warehouse where the
Sequoia Pacific computers had been taken after the election. She had her
friend videotape her while she pressed the button next to her name on the
ballot. To her dismay, the name of her primary opponent registered on a small
LED located near the bottom of the machine that most voters apparently do not
notice, since, according to a Sequoia Pacific official, it is two feet below
the buttons. Bernecker recounts pressing her name
again and again on 12 machines and she discovered that her name popped up in
the LED only one out of every three times. The machine was far less fickle
when her opponent’s button was pressed, counting his name faithfully every
time but one, when the third-place candidate’s name appeared.
Bernecker, a civic activist and the owner of a fitness
and health center, cried foul, along with five other candidates, who all sued
the elections commissioner and the city of Baton Rouge. The judge, who, only
two days before the hearing, inexplicably replaced the appointed judge (whom
Bernecker considered to be fair) threw out the case the same day.
http://www.ecotalk.org/Pandora'sBlackBox.htm
-
1995 Louisiana -
... Republican supporters of U.S. Senate candidate Woody Jenkins ...cried foul
in his election ...With only ten minutes left in the count, and losing by a
few thousand votes, Jenkins’ opponent suddenly surged ahead with ten thousand
votes that came out of the predominantly inner city Orleans parish, which had
been noted for low voter turnouts. But, in her local paper it was said to have
enjoyed a turnout of 105%!
http://www.ecotalk.org/Pandora'sBlackBox.htm
-
1996 Massachusetts - "One
most recent example of a local story with little or no national coverage was
the November Democrat Primary race for the Massachusetts’ 10th
District seat in the U.S. Congress, where challenger Philip Johnston – who had
been declared the winner over entrenched Democrat nominee, William Delahunt –
lost the nomination on a bizarre second recount. Johnston told Relevance:
"The court looked at some disputed punchcard ballots
which had already been declared to be blank and the court declared them to be
actual votes." Suspiciously, 756 of the
968disputed punchcard ballots came out of the same community –Weymouth, Mass –
suggesting that either "Weymouthenians" are shamefully inferior cardpunchers
than their neighbors in the rest of the state, or someone may have tampered
with the ballots. The State’s Supreme Judicial Court examined the suspect
ballots to determine "voter intent" by detecting "dimples" and other faint
markings and somehow ended up awarding 469votes to Delahunt and 177 to
Johnston, thereby reversing the latter’s victory."
http://www.ecotalk.org/Pandora'sBlackBox.htm
-
1997 Florida 04/07 The Tampa
Tribune - Bob Stamper, a 10-year state attorney investigator, usually works on
white-collar crime cases. But his investigation at the supervisor of elections
office involves no crime. Rather, the probe is focusing on a ballot count that
landed Republican Bruce L. Parker at the top of the heap election night, but
later unseated him in favor of Democrat Marlene Duffy Young after a
court-ordered hand recount. Todd Urosevich, a vice president of American
Information Systems [now ES&S], which made Polk's troubled ballot-counting
equipment, already has been interviewed by Stamper, and told Stamper his
machines were not responsible for the miscount.
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html
-
1998 Hawaii - Faulty ES&S machines
used in Hawaii's 1998 elections forced that state's first-ever recount. The
company paid $250,000 to settle contract disputes and $280,000 to recount the
ballots after complaints about poorly trained poll watchers, malfunctioning
voting machines and spoiled ballots. Nonetheless, the state and ES&S have been
negotiating a new eight-year contract to count ballots in the next four
elections, said Dwayne Yoshina, Hawaii's chief election officer. Two other
potential bidders dropped out of competition.
http://starbulletin.com/2000/06/07/news/story3.html
-
2000 Florida - History repeats itself again and again and
again.
"Undervotes"--the failure of
votes to register on a voted ballot--occurred on about 10,000 ballots in Palm
Beach County this year, where Vice President Al Gore has strong support. In
1988, in MacKay's four Democratic stronghold counties, there were 210,000
people who voted for president but did not vote in the U.S. Senate race. In a
comparable U.S. Senate race in a presidential-election year--1980--in the same
four counties, three out of every 100 presidential voters did not vote for
senator; in 1988, 14 of every 100 did not. In the entire state of Florida,
excluding the four MacKay counties, fewer than one of 100 presidential
voters--25,000--were not recorded as also voting in the Senate race. Three of
the MacKay counties in 1988 are among Gore's big four recount counties.
http://www.notablesoftware.com/Press/Dugger1.html
-
2000 Florida - An entire
precinct had been left uncounted. The ballots had been run through the card
reader, but the operator had pressed CLEAR instead of SET. (The recount gave
Gore +368, Bush +23.) In Deland, Volusia County, a disk glitch caused 16,000
votes to be subtracted from Gore and hundreds added to Bush in the original
totals. This was detected when 9,888 votes were noticed for the Socialist
Workers Party candidate, and a new disk was created. (The corrected results
were Gore 193, Bush 22, Harris 8.) In Pinellas County, election workers were
conducting a SECOND recount after the first recount gave Gore more than 400
new votes. Some cards that were thought to have been counted were not.[
Source: Democrats tell of problems at the polls across Florida,
The New
York Times, November 10, 2000, National Edition, p. A24]
http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-9.htm
-
2000 - Florida - Supervisor
of Elections in Palm Beach County, Florida, who some say single handedly cost
Al Gore the presidency, is back with another debacle. Her office is being sued
by the former Republican mayor of Boca Raton, Emil Danciu, who claims that the
city council election held last March should be re-run due to malfunctions in
the new $14 million dollar computer voting machines LePore bought from Sequoia
Voting Systems Inc.. Rob Ross was the lead attorney
http://www.ecotalk.org/Dr.RebeccaMercuriComputerVoting.htm
-
2000 New Jersey 02/18/ THE RECORD,
Northern New Jersey About 75 percent of the voting machines in the city of
Passaic failed to work when the polls opened on Election Day, forcing an
undetermined number of voters to use paper ballots during the morning hours.
An independent consultant who later examined the machines concluded the
problem was due to sabotage, which has led a Democratic freeholder to refer
the matter to the FBI.
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html
-
2000 New Mexico "The immediate
implication of our analysis is that the U.S. can lower the number of lost
votes in 2004 by replacing punch cards and lever machines with optical
scanning. Punch cards and levers are, in our assessment, dominated
technologies. That is, there are voting technologies available today that are
superior, from the perspective of lost votes. Scanners consistently perform
better than punch cards and levers. We also believe that optical scanning
dominates older full-faced, push button DREs, which comprise fully two-thirds
of the electronic machines in our analysis. Touchscreens are, in our
opinion, still unproven. Some counties, like Riverside, California,
have had good experiences; other counties like Beaver County, Pennsylvania,
and many counties in New Mexico had very high residual vote rates (over
five percent in 2000)."
-
2000 Pennsylvania 11/14 -
Pittsburgh Post Gazette City Councilwoman Valerie McDonald yesterday called
for an investigation of voting machine irregularities at polling places in
Lincoln-Lemington, Homewood and the East Hills last week, saying machines in
the city's 12th and 13th wards and other predominantly black neighborhoods
were malfunctioning for much of Election Day. McDonald said both machines at a
Lincoln-Lemington polling place were out of service for the first three hours,
driving away 50 voters. Several machines were in and out of service at 13th
Ward polling places in Homewood and East Hills, smoking and spitting out
jammed and crumpled paper and leaving poll workers to wait hours for repair by
Allegheny County elections division workers. Workers in the polling places
"strongly felt that the machines were intentionally programmed incorrectly ...
and were sabotaged,"
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html
-
2000 Pennsylvania - "The immediate
implication of our analysis is that the U.S. can lower the number of lost
votes in 2004 by replacing punch cards and lever machines with optical
scanning. Punch cards and levers are, in our assessment, dominated
technologies. That is, there are voting technologies available today that are
superior, from the perspective of lost votes. Scanners consistently perform
better than punch cards and levers. We also believe that optical scanning
dominates older full-faced, push button DREs, which comprise fully two-thirds
of the electronic machines in our analysis. Touchscreens are, in our opinion,
still unproven. Some counties, like Riverside, California, have had good
experiences; other counties like Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and many
counties in New Mexico had very high residual vote rates (over five percent in
2000)."
http://web.mit.edu/voting/MS%20Word%20Report%20for%20Visually%20Impaired%20Users.doc
-
2000 Venezuela -
Associated Press (AP) reporter Jessica Fargen wrote
in June 2000, "ES&S has felt the most fallout from its problems in
Venezuela, where that nation's highest court suspended the May 28 elections
because of technical glitches in the cards used to tabulate votes. Dozens of
protesters have chanted "Gringos get out!" at ES&S technicians working in
Venezuela's election offices. The U.S. Embassy in Caracas has protested the
treatment by secret police of ES&S personnel, including alleged verbal and
physical abuse and threats. Venezuela sent an air force jet to Omaha to fetch
computers and experts in a last-ditch effort to fix the problem before the
delay was ordered. Venezuela's president and the head of the nation's election
board accused ES&S of trying to destabilize the country's electoral process."
http://starbulletin.com/2000/06/07/news/story3.html
-
2001California - "...the
manufacturers of Riverside's system, Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., based in
Hayward, Calif., insist that their machines, which are plugged into the wall
and not hooked up to a central network open to hackers, are thoroughly
reliable, accurate and secure. There were glitches in November. The tabulating
machines shut down shortly after 11 p.m. with 10 percent of the ballots
uncounted
because the system did not have a large enough
capacity.
Although that was an embarrassment — delegations from as far away as Japan
were observing that countywide debut — Sequoia officials said the solution was
a simple matter of adjusting the software."
http://www.kioskcom.com/articles_detail.php?ident=308
-
2001 Texas 11/19 Houston Chronicle
"We have a problem where voters are being turned away from polls even though
they have the proper identification," said Joe Householder, spokesman for the
Brown campaign. "A potential reason may be that computers were down, but that
is not an excuse. The law is pretty clear on this." A computer problem cut off
access to the county's voter registration database for about one hour after
polls opened Saturday afternoon, said Tony Sirvello, administrator of
elections for the Harris County Clerk's Office. ...the problem affected four
polling sites: the Fiesta Mart on Kirby, the Spring Branch Community Center,
Kashmere Multi-Service Center and the Sunnyside Multi-Service Center
-
2002 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 Election Systems & Software.
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. The
"glitch" is still being examined. (By a citizens group?) No. (By a judge?) No.
(By an independent computer expert?) No. (By someone who works for ES&S?) Yes.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12 /
http://democrats.com/search.cfm?term=stolen%20election
-
2002 California - California
machines that can't add: The problem in Monterey, California was that the
department's mainframe computers refused to add the results of early absentee
votes and those cast on touch-screen computers prior to Election Day. "We
didn't have any problems whatsoever during our pre-election tests," said the
elections official.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
-
2002 California - 103,000 votes
lost by computers in Broward County. In California, all the "Yes" votes
registered as "No."
http://www.talion.com/vote-rigging.html
-
2002
California 02/11/ - The San Francisco Chronicle Jones' investigation raised
the specter of massive inaccuracies in the November 2000 vote count -- enough
to put in question the election of some members of the Board of
Supervisors...For instance, in precinct 3213 on Russian Hill, the city
reported counting 328 ballots and 327 signatures were in the roster. But when
state investigators opened the box for that precinct that city officials
pulled from storage, they found only 170 ballots. In one precinct, the major
discrepancies found by Jones seem to have existed on election night as well.
In polling place 2214 in the Western Addition, the city counted 416 ballots,
but there were only 362 signatures in the roster, and the secretary of state
found only 357 paper ballots.
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html
- 2002 Florida - Janet Reno's (primary) campaign
for governor is trying to build a sweeping case against the now-infamous
touch-screen voting machines that campaign officials believe may be
responsible for Reno's losing thousands of votes in the Democratic primary.
Among the allegations: Touch-screen machines suffer from a buildup of smudges
that create inaccuracies as more people vote; some voters saw the wrong
candidate's name light up when they touched the screen; many machines may not
have properly calculated votes; and some machines had more than the typical
percentage of ballots without a vote in the gubernatorial primary. Election
Systems and Software, the company that manufactures the iVotronic machines
used in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, could not be reached late Saturday.
Last week, ES&S said in a statement that its machines ``accurately captured
100 percent of the votes which were cast. No votes were lost or not counted.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/4077014.htm
- 2002 Florida - McBride was a tough guy to
vote for: One voter said that he tried 10 times, and every time he pressed
McBride the Bush choice lit up. He could only get his vote to light up the
McBride choice when he pressed a dead area of the screen. No paper trail was
available, so no one really knows who got any of the votes — regardless of
which candidate lit up. Similar problems were reported in various
permutations, for various candidates, by several Florida voters, and an
identical problem was noted in Texas.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Florida -
On Nov. 7, 2002, CNN reported that electronic
voting systems in
South Florida’s Broward County crashed, causing 103,222 ballots to be lost on
election night. County election officials said the missing votes did not
affect the outcome of
any races, but one couldn’t help but remember that George W. Bush was handed
the 2002 presidency based on a slimmer margin.
http://www.metroland.net/back_issues/vol_26_no31/features.html
- 2002 Florida - 09/17 The Bradenton Herald
(Florida) Union County...has had trouble-free elections dating back at least
to the early 1920s as the only county in Florida that continued to hand count
its ballots. But that changed this year... ...But counting the county's 2,642
ballots using the new optical-scan machinery this year took two days, after a
programming error rendered the automatic count useless. So it was back to the
tried-and-true hand count for Union County, which is about 130 miles east of
Tallahassee. The equipment vendor, Election Systems and Software Inc.,
accepted responsibility for the problems, which were caused when a printing
error gave both Republican and Democratic ballots the same code. The machines
read them both as Republican. Todd Urosevich, vice-president of election
product sales, said the company will pick up the expenses for the hand count
and apologized to the county.
- 2002 Florida - "Only a few problems,
meanwhile, were reported in the Florida counties of Miami-Dade and Broward
where difficulties with high-tech
machines had
thrown the Sept. 10 primary into confusion and delayed results for a week in
the Democratic gubernatorial contest."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2002-11-05-voting-technology_x.htm
- 2002
Florida - November 10,
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=14 This
whistleblower is an accountant, and he took it upon himself to call Century
Village. He was told that their occupancy has remained stable (around 13,000
residents) since the complex hit capacity in 1998. Miami Herald listed the
following figures for the total votes cast at the Democrat-friendly Broward
County Century Village precinct in the general
election:
1994: 7,515
1998: 10,947
2002: 4,179
- 2002 Florida - "I was the clerk of a precinct
in Broward County FL. We counted exactly the number of voters who voted on the
machines. The total was 713, however the machine count was 749. I reported
this information to the Broward County Staff upon returning my supplies that
evening after the election. "They, to my disbelief, thought they had a
successful election. They told me if the difference between the actual voters
and the machine vote was 10% that that was within their acceptable range.
"Imagine this could be 100,000 votes per million votes cast! And who would
ever know what candidate or issue they were assigned to. "If you like please
contact me..." Thank you. Ellen In a follow up, we obtained her notarized
affidavit, which contains a statement that Mike Lindsay, from the Florida
Division of Elections, told her that the state of Florida would not certify
any machine that produced a paper trail. This matches another report we
received, from a voting machine manufacturer who was told that it is illegal
to have a paper trail in the state of Florida. When he asked to see the law,
they could not produce it. Ellen also says that the ES&S machines purchased in
Broward County were bought while they were not certified. This is corroborated
by a statement from another witness, and bears looking into further.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=15
- 2002 Georgia - In one
county ballots in at least three precincts listed the wrong county commission
races. Officials shut down the polls to fix the problem but didn't know how
many wrong ballots were cast or how to correct errant votes. In another, a
county commission race was omitted from a ballot. Cards voters need to access
machines malfunctioned. Elsewhere, machines froze up and dozens were had
software programming errors.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Georgia - Officials forgot where they put
their memory cards: Fulton County election officials said that memory cards
from 67 electronic voting machines had been misplaced, so ballots cast on
those machines were left out of previously announced vote totals. No hand
count can shine any light on this; the entire state of Georgia went to
touch-screen machines with no physical record of the vote. Fifty-six cards,
containing 2,180 ballots, were located, but 11 memory cards still were missing
Thursday evening. Bibb County and Glynn County each had one card missing after
the initial vote count. When DeKalb County election officials went home early
Wednesday morning, they were missing 10 cards.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
-
2002 Georgia - "Technical
problems characterized as minor were reported in three of Georgia's 159
counties, with two
machines failing in one. One
touchscreen
machine locked up and crashed as Mary Perdue, the wife of Georgia's Republican
gubernatorial candidate Sonny Perdue, was casting her ballot."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2002-11-05-voting-technology_x.htm
- 2002 Kansas - The
Associated Press
Thursday, August 22,
2002
Kansas -- "The discovery of a computer glitch
reversed one
outcome from this month's primary elections
in Kansas, and
an unsuccessful candidate
in another race
has based his request for a special
election on
technical difficulties that allegedly occurred
in his race.
In
Clay
County,
computer results from a
county
commission primary had challenger Roy Jennings defeating incumbent Jerry Mayo
by 22 votes.
The hand recount, completed Tuesday, revealed Mayo as the winner — and by a
landslide, 540 votes to 175.
In one ward,
which Mayo carried 242-78, the computer had mistakenly
reversed the
totals. And in
the absentee voting, which originally showed a 47-44 edge for Jennings, a hand
count found Mayo winning 72-19.
"I'm sorry everyone had to go through that, but glad to see the will of the
voters carried through," Mayo said.
Jennings, whose attorneys walked out of Tuesday's
election panel
hearing, said he had reservations about the recount.
"The ballots and counting machine and program chip were open to anyone with
access to the (county)
clerk's office, mostly active opponents to my campaign," Jennings said.
And in Great
Bend, a fossil hunter who sought a seat
in the state
Legislature is seeking a special
election,
alleging problems with a machine that scans ballots opened the door for
possible tampering.
Alan Detrich lost his GOP primary bid for the 112th District seat to the
incumbent, Rep. John Edmonds of Great Bend, by a margin of 2 to 1.
Detrich, also of Great Bend, wrote to Atty. Gen. Carla Stovall and Secretary
of State Ron Thornburgh on Monday with concerns about how ballots were handled
on election
night.
"I have no evidence that any ballots were tampered with, but the fact that the
ballot boxes were outside Barton
County for
approximately five hours
in two separate
vehicles with unknown occupants raises serious questions," Detrich wrote.
"
http://www.securepoll.com/Archives/Archive102.htm#Aug
- 2002 Louisiana - "I can't say every precinct
had a problem, but the vast majority did" -- Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana
Clerk of Court John Dahmer said at least 20 percent of the machines in his
parish malfunctioned. "One percent might be acceptable, but we're not even
close to that," Dahmer said. He said 15 employees worked to combat the
malfunctions.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Louisiana - More than 200 machine
malfunctions reported in Ascension Parish (Louisiana): An elections official
gnashed his teeth as more than 200 machine malfunctions were called in. The
Parish Clerk said his staff was on the road repairing machines from 5 a.m. to
9 p.m. In one case, a machine wasn't repaired until 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. "A
mechanic would fix a machine, and before he could get back to the office, it
would shut down again," Bourque said.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Louisiana - 11/07/2002 The Times-Picayune
- "With a
34-vote
margin
separating the two justice of the peace candidates in
St.
Bernard
Parish, a
glitch that has left 35
absentee
votes
untallied has everyone guessing about the outcome of the race. Local elections
officials say the problem will be fixed today so the final
votes can
be tallied and a winner declared. "Officials from the
parish
registrar of voters and the Elections Division of the secretary of state's
office spent Wednesday scrambling to count the
absentee
ballots, which became inaccessible when the system locked up Tuesday shortly
after 8 p.m. "The uncounted ballots could decide the race for the Ward K seat,
in which Myrty Alfonso led Melvin Guerra by 34
votes, 809
to 775, with all precincts reporting. "...Upon opening the
absentee
voting machines at 8 p.m., officials realized that the machines were locked up
and contacted state
election
supervisors, who arrived at about 8:30 p.m., Crumhorn said. But even with
technicians on the scene, the machines would not yield their tallies. "'They
didn't have the tools to work on it last night,' Crumhorn said. "The tools
arrived Wednesday afternoon, but the machines still wouldn't function,
Crumhorn said. "That left voters and both candidates waiting until today to
discover who won."'I've never heard of such a thing in all my life,' Guerra
said."...Something just went wrong -- I don't know what," she said. 'Next
election,
we're going to start at 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. in the evening.'
- 2002 Maryland - Vote Republican (read
"Democrat") — In Maryland, a software programming error upset a lot of voters
when they saw a banner announcing "Democrat" at the top of their screen, no
matter who they voted for.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Nebraska - When all else fails, use duct
tape: In Sarpy County, Nebraska, they used duct tape to stick a block of wood
under the machine — that's the only way it would feed votes through.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Nebraska - Candidate for governor finds
vote-counting computer asleep: I spoke with Paul Rosberg, the Nebraska Party
candidate for governor, who told me he eagerly took advantage of a Nebraska
law that lets candidates watch their votes being counted. He first was invited
to watch an optical scanner machine, which had no counter on it, and then was
taken into the private room, where he was allowed to watch a computer on a
table with a blank screen. So much for public counting of votes.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Nebraska - Nearly a day later, no votes
were counted in Adams County. A software programming error from ES&S caused
the problem, County Election Commissioner Chris Lewis said. Attempts to clear
up the problem, including using a backup machine, failed. The problem affected
at least 12,000 ballots. "The irony is they had one of the newest pieces of
voting equipment in the state," said Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale."
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Nebraska - This crushing defeat never
happened: Vote-counting machines failed to tally "yes" votes on the Gretna
school-bond issue (Nebraska), 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. New Jersey - "What the hell do I do with this?" — A
bag full of something that looked like rolls of cash register tapes was handed
to the County Clerk. A computer "irregularity" in a New Jersey vote-counting
system caused three of five relay stations to fail, leaving a single county
clerk holding the bag for a hand count.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 New Mexico - Candidate declared victory
prematurely: New Mexico candidate Heather Wilson declared herself the victor
and made a speech, even though the margin was only 51:49 and votes weren't
fully counted. First reports explained that "thousands of new votes had been
found but not counted." Later, when thousands of new votes were not discovered
after all, the reason for her victory premonition was changed to an influx of
uncounted absentee votes, 2:1 for Wilson.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 New Mexico - A software programming error
caused machine to count the wrong names: In Taos, New Mexico just 25 votes
separated the candidates in one race; another race had a 79-vote margin. After
noticing that the computer was counting votes under the wrong names, Taos
County Clerk Jeannette Rael contacted the programmer of the optical machine
and was told it was a software programming error. The votes were then
hand-counted.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 New Jersey - 44 of 46 machines
malfunction in New Jersey: Election workers had to turn away up to 100 early
voters when it was discovered that 96 percent of the voting machines couldn't
register votes for the Mayor, despite having the machines pre-tested and
certified for use.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12 /
http://www.metroland.net/back_issues/vol_26_no31/features.html
- 2002 New York - Voting machine tallies
impounded in New York: Software programming errors hampered and confused the
vote tally on election night and most of the next day, causing elections
officials to pull the plug on the vote-reporting web site. Commissioners
ordered that the voting machine tallies be impounded, and they were guarded
overnight by a Monroe County deputy sheriff.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 North Carolina - Trying to find 300
voters so they can vote again: In North Carolina, one out of four new
touch-screen voting machines failed in early voting, losing 294 votes. The
machines were shut down before Election Day, so election workers looked for
the 294 voters to ask them to vote again. (A paper trail would have solved
this problem.)
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 North Carolina - A software programming
error overturned the result: In North Carolina, a software programming error
caused vote-counting machines to skip over several thousand party-line votes,
both Republican and Democratic. Machines aren't supposed to get past quality
control, and certainly not past certification, and definitely not past
pretesting, if their programming is so flawed. But everyone seemed to yawn.
Fixing the error turned up 5,500 more votes and reversed the election.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Ohio - In Ohio, a vote-counting machine
malfunctioned with 12 of the county's 67 precincts left to count. A back-up
vote-counting machine was found, but it also could not read the vote. Election
workers piled into a car and headed to another county to tally their votes.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 Pennsylvania - One hundred percent error
tabulating Libertarian votes: In Pennsylvania, a voter reported that he had
followed his conscience and voted Libertarian. When he reviewed the results
for his precinct, though, the Libertarian candidate received zero votes. Two
ways to look at this: Unimportant, just a vote; or, a 100 percent error.
Either way, why bother to vote?
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 South Carolina -
COLUMBIA, S.C.
- "Pickens
County was unable to get totals from two
precincts on Election Day because of computer glitches, said Marilyn Bowers,
director of the county's Registration and Election Office.
Returns were in from one of the precincts,
Dacusville II, on Wednesday morning. But votes
from the other precinct, Powdersville II, remained out and officials were
working to extract information from the computer there in the afternoon."
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/4459621.htm
- 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; only a hand-count was able to sort it out. Good thing there were
paper ballots.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
- 2002 South Dakota - Double-counting votes in
South Dakota: Blamed on "flawed chip." ES&S sent a replacement chip; voter
demanded that the original chip be impounded and examined. Who gets to examine
it? ES&S.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
-
2002
Texas - In Comal County Texas, the
uncanny coincidence of three winning Republican candidates in a row tallying
up exactly 18,181 votes each was called weird, but apparently no one thought
it was weird enough to audit.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/110802_sn_number.html
-
2002 Texas - A Republican
landslide turned into a Democratic landslide when election officials in Scurry
County, Texas did a hand count.
http://www.talion.com/vote-rigging.html /
http://www.voxfux.com/articles(closed)/00000050.htm Nov. 7,
2002, 3:08PM
Chip glitch hands victory to wrong candidate Associated Press ABILENE - A
Scurry
County
election error
reversed the outcomes in two commissioner races
-
2002
Texas - 05/08/2002
By ED HOUSEWRIGHT
The Dallas
Morning News
Dallas, TX - "The
outcomes of at
least 18 suburban Dallas County elections held Saturday remain unclear because
of
vote-counting problems.
About 5,000 of
nearly 18,000 ballots
cast during the
early voting period in April on touch-screen electronic
ballots have
not been properly counted and assigned to candidates, said Toni Pippins-Poole,
the county's
assistant elections administrator.
The results
will not be final until Wednesday or Thursday, but no elections will have to
be held again, she said."
http://www.securepoll.com/Archives/Archive80.htm
-
2002 Texas - May. 07,
By MITCH MITCHELL
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
DFW.com
IRVING, TX - "A discrepancy
of more than
380 votes - possibly caused by a computer glitch - could put two City Council
candidates in a runoff.
Unofficial election results released Saturday indicated that Jim Beggs had won
the race for
Place 5 on the
Irving City Council with a slim 51.2
percent
majority.
The closest
challenger, René Castilla, got nearly 43
percent
of
the vote.
But records indicate that Dallas County's computerized voting machines did not
count 383 early
ballots...On Monday, technicians from
Election Systems Software
of Omaha, Neb.,
began examining more than 18,000 computerized files to determine why
the discrepancy
occurred and who should receive what portion
of
the 383 votes.
" http://www.securepoll.com/Archives/Archive80.htm
http://www.securepoll.com/Archives/Archive80.htm
-
2003 Canada - "In January 2003, during Canada's New Democratic
Party leadership convention, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported,
“Earl Hurd of Election.com said he believes someone used a "denial of service"
program to disrupt the voting – paralyzing the central computer by bombarding
it with a stream of data”…service was restored, then… "Toronto city councilor
Jack Layton's victory on the first ballot surprised many, who had expected a
second or even third round of voting before a leader was chosen from the pack
of six candidates."
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/01/25/ndp_delay030125 Editor's note:
For election security experts, a strong and growing
suspicion is that computer glitches or disruptions are actually vote rigging.
A surprise election result should raise a red flag.
-
2003 Special Report - Dan
Spillane, a voting machine test engineer, has filed a lawsuit against his
former employer, DRE touch-screen voting machine manufacturer VoteHere.
Spillane's lawsuit charges wrongful and retaliatory termination; he contends
he was removed so that he could not blow the whistle to certification labs and
pass critical information to the US General Accounting Office. He says he has
evidence which shows voting systems are certified despite known flaws,
demonstrating a weakness in both the NASED and the ITA system for certifying
machines.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/votehere-lawsuit-1.html
- Jun 26, 03 Johns Hopkins
Report: Numerous security flaws are identified in a newly published paper
entitled 'Analysis of
an Electronic Voting System' by Tadayoshi Kohno (JHU), Adam Stubblefield
(JHU), Aviel Rubin (JHU), and Dan Wallach (Rice University).
http://www.jhuisi.jhu.edu Read about
it:
The Baltimore Sun (Front Page),
MSNBC News,
CNN,
New York Times,
The Washington Post,
Reuters,
CNET
News,
Scoop, and
Headlines@Hopkins.
Go back to Voting Machine Webpage
Here is Lynn Landes's chart
on the Florida 2004 election
http://www.thelandesreport.com/Florida2004.htm.