Sum of a Glitch

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: David Chessler <chessler () usa net>
Date: August 27, 2004 11:54:39 PM EDT
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: FWD: Sum of a Glitch


Sum of a Glitch

by Bev Harris


In the Alabama 2002 general election, machines made by Election Systems 
and
Software (ES&S) flipped the governor's race. Six thousand three hundred 
Baldwin
County electronic votes mysteriously disappeared after the polls had 
closed
and everyone had gone home. Democrat Don Siegelman's victory was handed 
to
Republican Bob Riley, and the recount Siegelman requested was denied. 
Three
months
after the election, the vendor shrugged. "Something happened. I don't 
have
enough intelligence to say exactly what," said Mark Kelley of ES&S.

When I began researching this story in October 2002, the media was 
reporting
that electronic voting machines are fun and speedy, but I looked in 
vain for
articles reporting that they are accurate. I discovered four magic 
words, "
voting machines and glitch," which, when entered into a search engine, 
yielded a
shocking result: A staggering pile of miscounts was accumulating. These 
were
reported locally but had never been compiled in a single place, so 
reporters
were missing a disturbing pattern.

I published a compendium of 56 documented cases in which voting 
machines got
it wrong.

How do voting-machine makers respond to these reports? With shrugs. They
indicate that their miscounts are nothing to be concerned about. One of 
their
favorite phrases is: "It didn't change the result."

Except, of course, when it did:

In the 2002 general election, a computer miscount overturned the House
District 11 result in Wayne County, North Carolina. Incorrect 
programming caused
machines to skip several thousand party-line votes, both Republican and
Democratic. Fixing the error turned up 5,500 more votes and reversed the
election for state representative.

This crushing defeat never happened: Voting machines failed to tally 
╲yes"
votes on the 2002 school bond issue in Gretna, Nebraska. This error 
gave the
false impression that the measure had failed miserably, but it actually 
passed
by a 2-to-1 margin. Responsibility for the errors was attributed to 
ES&S, the
Omaha company that had provided the ballots and the machines.

According to the Chicago Tribune, "It was like being queen for a 
day--but
only for 12 hours," said Richard Miholic, a losing Republican candidate 
for
alderman in 2003 who was told that he had won a Lake County, Illinois, 
primary
election. He was among 15 people in four races affected by an ES&S 
vote-counting
foul-up.

An Orange County, California, election computer made a 100 percent error
during the April 1998 school bond referendum. The Registrar of Voters 
Office
initially announced that the bond issue had lost by a wide margin; in 
fact, it
was supported by a majority of the ballots cast. The error was 
attributed to a
programmer's reversing the "yes" and "no╡ answers in the software 
used to
count the votes.

A computer program that was specially enhanced to speed the November 
1993
Kane County, Illinois, election results to a waiting public did just 
that--
unfortunately, it sped the wrong data. Voting totals for a dozen 
Illinois races
were incomplete, and in one case they suggested that a local referendum 
proposal
had lost when it actually had been approved. For some reason, software 
that had
worked earlier without a hitch had waited until election night to omit 
eight
precincts in the tally.

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. In the 
2002 Clay
County, Kansas, commissioner primary, voting machines said Jerry Mayo 
ran a
close race but lost, garnering 48 percent of the vote, but a hand 
recount
revealed Mayo had won by a landslide, receiving 76 percent of the vote.

http://www.progressivetrail.org/articles/040825Harris.shtml



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