get this to Senator Feinstein and GAO please

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

while Sen Feinstein is asking the GAO to investigate touch-screens and the printers
in Florida and Ohio, I have some great data for her right her in NC.
Anyone have some contacts in her office?

Mecklenburg County NC's election department sent me their trouble reports for the May primary and November General Election.

The report lists the many different problems with the touch-screens and
their tempermental thermal printers, printers that often jammed or failed.

The NC Coalition for Verified Voting predicted these problems in advance and had urged all NC counties to purchase the tried and true optical scan systems and not the touch-screen machines.
(See www.ncvoter.net ) 77 counties listened, 23 did not.


Here are the types of problems, by category and quantity not listed here

Paper jams, screen freezes, programming errors etc listed.
Panel would not charge.
Screen freeze.
Out of calibration.
Printer folding edge of paper.
Flash error/CRC error
Power shut down.
Printer frozen/power issue
Half of screen missing.
"Locked up".
CJ could not open panel
Battery low.
Printer door won't lock.
Corrupted flashcard - message.
Pct wkrs could not change paper roll.
RTAL not found - message
Panel beeping, screen frozen.
Chirping, but dead.
4 panels had printers not working
No response on 3 machines

Broken leg.
Panel fell/release latch won't work.
Panel would not accept Master PEB.
Ballot will not display.
Goes directly to Party Select when Master -
ADA programmed wrong.
Paper roll on backwards
Can't make selections when press screen.
ADA problem, audio tried - blank screen.
Time setting is off by 1 hour

http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/Mecklenburg_2006_Trouble_Report.pdf

About NC Counties:

23 of our NC counties use the ES&S iVotronic RTAL touch-screens.
The other 77 use the more mature and lower tech optical scan voting machines.

(Mecklenburg is the county that had 10 touch-screen machines with no voter verified paper printouts in the May, 2006 primary.)

Mecklenburg County has 513,513 reg voters and
190 polling places.

They used 1,076 "panels" (machines I think) used.

Longer List of Problems With ES&S iVotronic Paper Trail Failure in North Carolina, 2006.

November, 2006. NC: Printers Fail on Touch-screens - 9% Failure Rate in the Nov 2006 General Election:
"The system meant to produce a paper backup of votes cast on Guilford County’s
electronic voting machines failed in many cases during the election Nov. 7. ..
"He (Gilbert)knew that there would be problems,"said Joyce McCloy, a voting advocate
who has been critical of Gilbert on the paper record issue <1>
."He asked his county to buy these machines <2>
when he himself testified to the state that there would be problems with the paper backups <3>

Nov 2006 The NC State Board of Elections issues a memo on
Procedures for Recounting Damaged VVPAT <4>

Nov and May 2006. Mecklenburg 2006 Trouble Reports for Primary and General <5>

Eminent Computer Scientist Criticizes ES&S Touch-Screen Paper Trail
“The Real time Audit Log places high cognitive burdens on the voter, is extraordinarily
error prone for the auditor, and is possibly illegal in states that are strict about voting privacy." <6>

May 4, 2006 Few Voting Glitches Pop Up
10 touchcreen machines failed to print voter verified ballots in Mecklenburg County NC.
Workers put paper in wrong way <7>


Footnotes/links

<1> Dec 12, 2006. Printers failed on voting machines. Greensboro News & Record.
http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061215/NEWSREC0101/61215003/-1/NEWSREC0201

<2> November 8, 2005. Thwarting democracy in Guilford County. BlackBoxVoting.COM
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/s9/index.php?/archives/8-Thwarting-democracy-in-Guilford-County.html

<3> August 10, 2005. George Gilbert testimony to NC House Election Law Committee
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/HouseElectLawAug10Gilbert.doc

<4> November, 2006. N.C. State Board of Elections Procedures for Damaged Paper Trail
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/Procedures_for_Damaged_RTAL_Paper_Rolls.pdf

<5> Nov and May 2006. Mecklenburg 2006 Trouble Reports for Primary and General
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/Mecklenburg_2006_Trouble_Report.pdf

<6> June 21, 2006. Eminent computer scientist criticizes ES&S Real Time Audit Log. Vote Trust USA.
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1414&Itemid=51

<7> May 4, 2006. Few voting glitches pop up. Charlotte Observer
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/14495690.htm
(archived) http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/May_04_06_Few_voting_glitches_pop_up.pdf

[kster]

1. Senator Feinstein needs to read the

INTERNET, blend in a little COMMON sense, and give up on the Politicians little vote counting charade, because IT IS OVER!!

[Morgana LaFey]

2. Pick up the phone, call her office, ask for the staffer who works on this

Introduce yourself, have some credentials handy (knowledgeable voting activist is fine if that's all ya got), be ready to mention/describe DU (just because it's such a treasure trove and if they staffer KNOWS about it, will already know how valuable it is, probably), and describe your find and info.

Don't take no for an answer. Get a name, get contact info. Have a hot hook to use to get the appropriate staffer to start out with, e.g., "I know the Senator wants to look at FL and OH, but I've got some jaw-dropping figures she MUST see for NC, and if you recall, the election there...(whatever)...." Put whatever hyper-relevent info -- maybe it should be more about ES&S, I dunno.

YOU CAN DO THIS. So go do it. :D