Dayton Daily News: NEARLY HALF OF VOTING MACHINES TESTED FAIL

[mod mom]

Nearly half of voting machines tested fail

Montgomery officials tested the 5% of machines that drew complaints; 56 of those 125 machines failed.


By Lynn Hulsey
Staff Writer

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

DAYTON — After two days of tests, the results are in: About 2,500 people cast ballots in November on 56 malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines in Montgomery County, said Steve Harsman, county board of elections director.

He said it is impossible to know how many people finalized their electronic ballots without realizing that the Diebold Elections Systems machines were inaccurately registering their votes. But people had three chances to review their votes before finalizing them, and all the machines accurately tallied the votes that were finalized by voters, Harsman said.


On Tuesday, county election officials completed testing of 125 machines identified in voter complaints collected by Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, which called for the investigation. Some 2,530 voting machines were used in the county on Election Day.

Harsman said several malfunctioning machines were clustered at certain precincts, indicating they may have been damaged during delivery by a trucking company that hauls the machines to the polls.

-snip

http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/03/21/ddn032107elex.html?UrAuth=`NbNUOaNUUbTTUWUXUVUZTYU_UWU^UbUZU]UbUcTYWYWZV

[MADem]

1. Oh, blame those LOUSY truckers!!!!

Gee, were these predominantly Democrat precincts, ya gotta wonder?

Harsman said several malfunctioning machines were clustered at certain precincts, indicating they may have been damaged during delivery by a trucking company that hauls the machines to the polls.

Harsman blamed the malfunctions on calibration problems. Elections officials plan to have all voting machines re-calibrated using a fine-point stylus instead of workers' fingers. In addition, Harsman said, he will require that the trucking company improve its handling practices.

The findings will be reported to Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who plans a statewide review of the voting machines.

"No other counties in Ohio have done this analysis yet," said Ellis Jacobs, senior attorney for Advocates for Basic Legal Equality. "My guess is now that we've done it here and found there were real problems, it will encourage boards of elections in other counties to do this same investigation."

[Mister Ed]

2. When it's not the humidity, it's those darn truckers. Or something. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

3. Hand-count paper ballots. Post the results before any electronics are involved.

That is the best, most realistic temporary solution.

Get rid of these machines. Don't get rid of these machines. We don't have to defeat the corruption that these Bushite-controlled voting machines have wrought. It may be too formidable an obstacle. We just have to get paper ballots--a paper record of the vote that the voter has verified--and count them BEFORE the machines do.

Start at the state/local level, demanding that the Absentee Ballots be counted this way. AB voting nearly doubled in some places in the recent election--ordinary people boycotting the machines and trying to get around the rigged electronics. There is a big constituency for transparent vote counting. But the AB voters are not getting what they want. Corrupt election officials just scan those ballots right into the rigged system. Human beings don't count them. But if we can successfully achieve proper vote counting of the AB votes, it will snowball. Everyone will want their vote to be counted. And the machines will become obsolete--or will be used only for data storage and reporting. I think this is what we have to do--create a transparent vote counting system by default. Congress ain't gonna do it. Election officials ain't gonna do it. They're all touched by the corruption of these billions of dollars in contracts--and some have even darker motives. We have to do it ourselves, by forcing officials to start counting the votes, whatever fancy new machines they may have. (The ones that MUST be dumped into 'Boston Harbor' are the paperless machines, the touchscreens--OR they MUST be provided with a voter verified ballot. Congress is going to lard billions of dollars on these Bushite corporations, to add printers. Nothing we can do about it--except to try to make sure that it is a real ballot, and work at the state/local level to get it COUNTED.)

[mod mom]

5. I say sue the voting machine companies for faulty products and re-collect

tax payers money back from the greedy vote stealing republican cronies.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Trouble is, they are being protected by the greedy, vote stealing, career-building,

fascist-minded election officials and state/federal legislators, through whose fingers all of these billions of taxpayer dollars are being filtered. And the corruption is bipartisan, believe me. That's what I meant by the corruption being the biggest obstacle. We have DEMOCRATIC, as well as Republican, officials wanting to lard more billions on these criminal corporations, to "fix" the election system that they deliberately broke. These Bushite corporations and their 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting is mind-bogglingly detrimental to real Democrats and to the people of this country. How could our Democratic leaders have ever let this happen? That is the key question, to understanding why it is so difficult to repair.

And in a situation in which both Republicans and Democrats are supporting and protecting private, secret vote counting, by Bushite corporations, we have to find a way AROUND the corruption, so that we can start electing real advocates of the people, to DEAL WITH the corruption. The Democrats in Congress are NOT going to fix this. At best, they're going to put very expensive bandaid on it, and "sell" that as election reform, when it is not even close. WE have to fix it, at the state/local level, in whatever way we can. And I think demanding a handcount of the votes, and posting the results at the precinct level, whether they use these machines or not, is one way to get it done--to get back on the road to transparent vote counting.

[philb]

4. What type of problems did the voters have? and what problems did the tests show?

Are we talking about touch screen switching from one candidate to another?
was it always from Dems to Repubs?
was it switching to blank?

The article has incomplete information; apparently a coverup by authorities, not likely by the reporter.
Who are the authorities here and why did they provide incomplete information regarding the problems and test results?

[mod mom]

6. Jennifer Brunner will release a report.

The article came across an ER list serv with a VOTE FLIPPING heading, but hopefully the Brunner report will release detailed info.

[Kurovski]

8. K&R.(nt)