Programming Errors in Diebold Voting Machines in 34 States

by Deb Cupples |  As I read a recent Washington Post piece, I couldn't help thinking about a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin:  "It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes."

Here we are, just a couple months away from one of the most important presidential elections in decades, yet we still have to wonder about the accuracy of our nation's voting machines.  The Post reports:

"A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

"The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

"The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly." (WaPo)    

For the last six years, our nation's crop of election officials (at least the ones privy to ordinary news reports) knew that paperless touchscreen voting machines were problematic -- and that elections couldn't be accurately re-counted without paper trails. 

And yet, roughly 32% of our nation's voting precincts will have touch screen voting (McClatchy).  That's a scary figure, given that recent presidential elections have been won (or lost) by less than 15% of the vote.

In 2006, Ion Sancho (Elections Supervisor of Leon County, Florida) invited experts from Black Box voting down to Tallahassee and to hack into some Diebold-made (or "Premier," as the company now calls itself) opti-scan voting machines (Washington Post).  They came, they saw, they hacked -- showing evidence that even opti-scan machines aren't all that secure.

Mr. Sancho's exercise made news media nationwide.

In 2005, the GAO released a 100-page report discussing all sorts of problems with touch screen voting machines and potential for abuse (computer hacking and such) in various states during the 2004 election. The Equal Justice Foundation has a brief summary.

In November 2004 in Ohio, voting machines in a Gahanna precinct gave George Bush 4,258 votes and John Kerry 260 votes: records indicate that only 638 voters had cast votes in that precinct.

In November 2002 during Florida's gubernatorial election, Broward County reported software glitches that "caused a failure to report 100,000 votes."

In March 2002, touchscreen machines gave victory to the wrong candidate in a Medley, Florida city election.

That same month in Palm Beach County, voters reported that when they touched one candidate's name on the screen, an "X" showed up next to the other candidate's name. 

Touch screen error rates were large in Florida.  Before Election 2004, for example, a South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis found that Florida's touch-screen counties were 8 times more likely to have errors than counties using bubble-in ballots during the March 2004 primaries.

In 2003, an ex-Diebold worker reported that technicians had installed a "patch" on voting machines before Georgia's 2002 gubernatorial election -- without first having independent testing authorities certify the change. That year, Georgia saw election results that defied polls and expectations.

Ever mindful of readers' blood pressure levels, I'll stop listing examples.  If you want more info, see Verified Voting,  Black Box Voting, and the vote-fraud section at the Equal Justice Foundation.

Other Buck Naked Politics Posts:

* Another Bail Out: Automakers Want More Tax Dollars with Fewer Strings

* Obama Picks Biden, McCain Responds

* Court Upholds Sarbanes-Oxley

* Probe Begins re: Falsified Documents Justifying Iraq War

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Comments

[Charles]

One might almost think the people who run elections don't care whether our votes are counted.

[Deb Cupples]

Charles,

You make a good point -- though it's terribly understated, in British sort of way. :)