[IP] Sum of a Glitch
Begin forwarded message:
From: David Chessler <chessler@xxxxxxx>
Date: August 27, 2004 11:54:39 PM EDT
To: farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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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