EAC Initiates Formal Investigation Into ES&S Optical Scanners [View All]

[Wilms]

EAC Initiates Formal Investigation Into ES&S Unity 3.2.0.0 Voting System

Posted on March 3, 2011

From the pdf at the link -

Scope of Investigation

The focus of the Investigation shall be the ES&S DS200 Precinct Count Optical Scanner (Firmware Version 1.3.10.0) contained in the ES&S Unity 3.2.0.0 EAC certified voting system. Specifically, the investigation will focus on the following possible non-conformities with the VVSG:

1. Issue: Freeze/shutdown. The DS200 initiates the shutdown process whereupon it will complete approximately 90% of the shutdown process and then freeze. The screen saver will initiate after the appropriate time has elapsed. The DS200 Unit will not accept ballots in the frozen state.

2. Issue: Failure to log. Cuyahoga County election officials provided EAC the logs from their May 4 and August 8, 2010 elections. The May 4 election used over 1,000 DS200’s; the August 8 election was smaller, providing logs from only 12 machines. Review of these records identified an additional issue. The freeze/shutdown issue does not result in any record of its occurrence in the system logs.

3. Issue: Ballot Skew. When a 17” ballot is inserted incorrectly into the unit the lower left and right hand corners of the ballot are not accurately read.

4. Issue: Vote miscount. The DS200 accepts a voted ballot but does not record that ballot on its internal counter.

http://www.eac.gov/eac_initiates_formal_investigation_into_ess_unity_3.2.0.0_voting_system/