Help! Need specific recent examples of DRE vote-counting problems

[Fly by night]

While I review the DU 2004 ERD forum several times a day, I don't print out all the threads or responses that are relevant to my needs here in Tennessee. (I can't afford that much paper.) For that reason, I am writing to request assistance from you DUers with better memories than mine.

In the past week or two, I have read (somewhere) several recent examples of voting machine malfunctions that would be of great help to me in a presentation I have to make to a predominantly Republican audience in east Tennessee this coming Thursday. In particular, I remember a summary posted (somewhere) on the real problems that have recently been documented in Georgia with undervotes and other DRE problems. However, when I ran a DU search in this forum using the keywords "Georgia DREs", I got over 250 active threads on this forum and 67 threads here just in the past month alone with these keywords embedded somewhere in the thread. I have also read a recent specific example (from somewhere) that talked about a special single contest election (on a tax issue, I believe) where the number of voters who the DRES indicated showed up but cast no vote whatsoever on this single issue (around 250) exceeded the margin of victory (in the low 100s, I believe).

Could someone here please refresh my memory on where I can find these examples and others that document specific recent instances of serious problems with DRE vote counting. (You can just refer me to a specific thread; to other sources, including previous posts on this forum or elsewhere; or re-post the examples I am looking for.) Feel free to PM me with this information if you would like, or simply repost it on this thread. I hate to ask anyone to do additional work, but I don't know how I can electronically search this forum more efficiently without re-reading all 67 threads on this forum alone that mention just "Georgia DREs" over the past month.

My audience will be public officials (including county election commissioners) and members of the general public in Cumberland County (Crossville, TN). If there are any Orange State DUers who might want to attend my presentation (4:15-6:00 pm, Thursday, October 13, at the Art Circle Library Annex in Crossville).

Thanks for your help.

[Fly by night]

1. Here's one of the examples I was looking for. Keep 'em coming.

Compliments of John Gideon of votersunite.org (who responded to me within 20 minutes, forwarding an email he had received from a Georgia voting rights activist. VotersUnite is DA BOMB):
---------
On Sept. 20, Cobb County, GA held a referendum to add another 1% to our county sales tax. It was the only decision on the ballot and will generate $1.4 Billion in new infrastructure. Voter turnout was 12%.

At one point, the ballot count stopped due to technical difficulties. The margin of victory was 114 votes. The number of Diebold voter cards with neither Yes or No was 285. We do not really know why these cards were blank votes. The local paper was in favor of the tax and only reported the 285 after I emailed my blog to one of its editors. We have no paper trail in Cobb County or the state of Georgia, but some of us are working on it.

SPLOST Voters Committed to Apathy
http://davidchastain.blogspot.com/2005/09/splost-voters-committed-to-apathy.html

About 285 SPLOST voters showed up but never cast ballot
http://www.mdjonline.com/articles/2005/09/29/89/10196623.txt

Officials: New software delayed SPLOST results
http://www.mdjonline.com/articles/2005/09/22/89/10195956.txt

[truckin]

2. Here are some examples:

• In a precinct in Miami-Dade County there was a touchscreen or DRE machine malfunction on one machine that counted votes 3 times creating a discrepancy of 171 votes that became part of the certified canvass in the November 2004 election.5

5. Voters Group: Fla. Audit Shows Problems, ABC 7 News,
Miami, May 25, 2005 11:49 PM EST, URL: http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0505/231245.html


• In Maryland 403 trained pollwatchers at 108 precincts noted 201 machine problems that included machines crashing or freezing, smart card encoder failures, touchscreen failures that included vote switching, review screen malfunctions and many other problems. This number is more alarming when you consider that only 108 out of a total of 1,737 precincts were observed and also because of the difficulty of reviewing how a DRE machine is internally tabulating the vote totals.6

6. WHEN THE RIGHT TO VOTE GOES WRONG: Maryland Citizens Tell the Story of Election Day 2004, TrueVoteMD, November 2004, URL http://truevotemd.org/Election_Report.pdf


• More than 4,500 votes were lost in Carteret County, NC in the November 2004 election because of insufficient memory in the DRE voting machines.7

7. More than 4,500 North Carolina votes lost because of mistake in voting machine capacity, Jacksonville, N.C., USA Today, Associated Press, Nov. 4, 2004, URL http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/2004-11-04-votes-lost_x.htm


• An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush an extra 3,893 votes in a precinct where only 638 voters cast ballots in the November 2004 election.8

8. Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio, CNN, Associated Press, Nov. 5, 2004, URL http://www.wanttoknow.info/041105cnn.orig


• Voters reported some 1,100 problems with electronic voting machines on November 2, 2004 including trouble choosing their intended candidate.9

9. Electronic Voting Machine Woes Reported, ABC News, Associated Press, Nov. 3, 2004, URL http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=220927

[Stevepol]

4. Votersunite has a lot of recent examples, and I might quote

a recent example of Micro-Vote problems too. A link to a Voters Unite site which lists a whole bunch in chronological order is

http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp?sort=date&selectstate=NC&selectproblemtype=ALL

The Mecklenburg NC example is especially appropriate for your talk I think because in that case the elections commissioner bought some Micro-Vote machines from Montgomery County PA which had already malfunctioned. They malfunctioned again. Plus the commissioner was indicted for taking bribes and kick-backs from Ed O'Day and another computer technician. O'day was a rep for Micro-Vote (tho acting on his own, Ries, the CEO of Micro-Vote, says). In Montgomery County PA, by the way, the county sued Micro-Vote and won $1M. The verdict was supported on appeal. You might google for the desdription of this lawsuit from the law firm that handled the case. I talked to a Micro-Vote rep who claimed the machines in Montgomery County were used again and worked fine, also that there was no issue of "miscounting" the vote in PA. But the law firm's description of the case says clearly that the machiens miscounted. The rep I talked to also claimed that the $1M was over a "warranty" issue. Actually, according to the description I read, that issue was part of the appeal, but I don't think it played a role in the earlier verdict and monetary award. I don't have the link at hand but if you google for Montgomery County PA Micro-Vote lawsuit or such you'll find what you need.

To me this shows the position we put ourselves in when we privatize the vote: you end up with people making wild, unsubstantiated claims like used car salesmen and elections officials not having any idea who to trust or what to believe. As Thom Hartmann says, "Privatizing the vote is a crime against democracy."

[Stevepol]

6. Found the article by the law firm that prosecuted the Micro-Vote case.

http://www.elliottgreenleaf.com/July2003-1.htm

Elliott Greenleaf & Siedzikowski, P.C. is the law firm.

The appeal was decided in 2003, but the malfunction and mis-counting happened in the 90s, so that might not be recent enough for your purposes, but it certainly shows the mess we're in by relying on these easily hacked or mis-programmed or just badly made machines to count our vote.

And what's true for Micro-Vote is even truer for Diebold and ES&S and Sequoia.

[truckin]

3. Go to TrueVoteCT.org and look up

"Analysis of the RFP for Voting Machines in Connecticut" and you will find a lot of good information that will help you. We prepared this document in CT to educate our legislators about DREs and Optical Scan systems.

[Bill Bored]

5. MIAMI-DADE BLOWN AWAY! (What more do I have to say???)

http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-51.htm

[FogerRox]

7. Some numbers--- % of undervote, 2004 in PA & NM.

Last page of this PDF is very powerful. Last page can be used as a handout.
http://www.dos.state.pa.us/dos/lib/dos/20/shamos_report-_unilect200502apr05.pdf

Here is a little study in New Mexico-
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/NM/NMAnalysis_EL_JM.pdf

[Bill Bored]

12. Yes NM has been studied a lot and there is a lawsuit pending.

Lowell Finley is the man.

Check out votersunite where there is also an analysis.

[petgoat]

8. 22 Pages of Diebold Screw-ups; Last One 9/05

here: http://www.votersunite.org/info/Dieboldinthenews.pdf


7/04 DeKalb County, GA Summary page shows
wrong choices, voter notices errors (machine
fixed 45 min. later), machines overheated and
behaved erratically

7/04 Putnam County, GA Optical scanner failed
to read all the ballots

9/04 Prince Georges County, MD central modem
fails

11/04 Maryland--statewide lost votes reports

3/05 Montgomery County, MD 7% of machines
failed, 5% more were suspected of low vote
counts

9/05 Cobb County, GA After modem upgrade, 285
ballots are completely blank

[Fly by night]

9. Anyone remember the GA thread re: "undervotes" vs. "some other name" ...

... for the same phenomanon? That's primarily the other reference I'm looking for. Votersunite's summary of machine malfunctions by vendor is something I already have and it is very useful.

[Bill Bored]

11. Diebold reports refer to undervotes as "blank votes." Read on:

There are "blank voted races" and "blank voted ballots." In the latter case, entire ballots are cast blank.

The term "blank voted" when referring to a race however, is simply an undervote in a race where you can only vote for one candidate, but you vote for no one (or at least that's what the machine does). So they can have lots of undervotes for President, for example, and not report any of them because that's not what Diebold calls them.

Only races that allow votes to be cast for more than one candidate, in which the voter selects fewer than the maximum number allowed, are reported by Diebold as "undervoted."

Now, having said all that, which is according to Diebold's own documentation, it appears from on the ground investigation in GA, that even this potentially misleading nomenclature was violated in the 2004 Primary in which undervotes for Dem Senate came in third in that race! And oddly enough (for Diebold anyway), these were actually CALLED "undervotes!"

But in the 2004 General Election in GA, undervotes were reported as "blank voted races" and therefore it was claimed there weren't any!

I will leave it to the local experts to explain this discrepancy, but it appears that two different versions of software may have been used in these two elections in GA. The behavior of the version used in the Primary can not be found in any Diebold documentation I have seen, and I've read over 1,000 pages of it.

Hope this answers your question.

[Bill Bored]

13. Oh, and there's this:

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-gumbel/americas-next-election-n_b_7940.html>

[adolfo]

10. Votergate

http://www.votergate.tv/

They have some good stuff on video.

[Fly by night]

14. Thanks, guys. I knew DUers could set me on the right path.

I now have the references I was looking for, plus some more. Now to work up a talk that makes our points without scaring away the "coincidence theorists". 'Preciate the help.

[BeFree]

15. WOW

How can anyone who reads this thread and clicks on at least a few of the links provided, not Believe?

Good work, yall. Damn good work. FBN... ya gotta give us a copy of your speech...K?

[petgoat]

16. DBD Did It Again in GA in 2004

Diebold's stunt in Georgia in 2002 of inserting illegal uncertified
software patches in all the voting machines, which then recorded
stunning Republican upset victories in the Senatorial (Max Cleland)
and Gubernatorial races is well known, having been reported in Wired
Magazine and by Bev Harris in Black Box Voting.

I had missed this recent report by Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent
for the London newspaper The Independent, and the author of "Steal
This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in
America":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-gumbel/americas-next-election-n_b_7940.html

Diebold did it again. In the months before the election they decided
the machines needed a "security adjustment" and installed patches--and
the state said they needn't certify the patches until 5/05.

Public officials are highly motivated to cover up problems with the
brand new voting machines they just spent tens of millions
for--because problems make them look like idiots.