Volusia vote machine woes outpace other counties
By M.C. MOEWE
Staff Writer

DELAND This month's Volusia County election suffered at least four times the number of memory card failures due to Diebold Election Systems Inc. optical scan machines as other counties using the machines, an issue that has caused problems here since at least 2000.

On Friday, officials certified the results of the Nov. 7 general election, but Volusia County Chairman and Canvassing Board member Frank Bruno asked that the card failures be investigated.

Diebold spokesman David Bear said his company also plans to investigate the years-old memory card problem.

Elected officials emphasize that no votes have gone uncounted because of the faulty cards. But, those same officials admit that delays caused by the cards may have deterred voters, that the problem adds to the cost of elections and that faulty cards caused egregious errors in some elections.

Deanie Lowe, who was the Volusia County supervisor of elections for 12 years, said she sent problem cards to the company for analysis and in 2003 had Diebold officials come to Volusia to test the machines and the cards.

E-mails between county officials and the voting company during the past six years express confusion and in one instance describe how a troubled memory card caused votes to be lost, with the error being recognized after another issue forced a hand count.

Election watchdogs say the recent discovery that a single memory card could nefariously be used to alter election results adds more urgency to the situation.

During this month's election, 12 memory cards failed in Volusia County, compared to zero to three failures in some other counties that use the same machines. Volusia held a similar distinction during the November 2004 presidential elections, with 25 memory card failures, according to a Diebold e-mail.

Diebold replaced Volusia County's 311 optical scan memory cards because of defects, according to a June 23 Diebold packing slip. Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall said not all were defective, but couldn't say how many were. The machines have been used since 1994.

"The number of memory card failures you report is more than the rest of our customers in Florida combined," Diebold's Mark Earley wrote on Nov. 12, 2004, to a Volusia County elections worker.

Local election watchdog Susan Pynchon found a printed copy of the e-mail exchange while digging through the trash behind the Volusia County elections office in November 2004.

Two years later, Pynchon is still at it. She monitored this month's election, paying particular attention to issues involving Diebold's memory cards. In an HBO film, which airs at 6 tonight, a memory card is used to "stuff the ballot box" with negative and positive votes, changing the results of a mock election.

"Memory cards are electronic ballots, and they can be tampered with," Pynchon said, adding that increased failures add to security concerns. "That means there are more memory cards being handled."

In March, the state Division of Elections told local officials to track the cards carefully and watch for weaknesses in security that would allow hackers access.

In the HBO film, Volusia County is featured as the "home of the negative vote total," referring to the 16,022 negative votes recorded against Al Gore during the 2000 presidential elections. That infamous memory card failure occurred when the company was still known as Global Election Systems, which Diebold bought in 2002 when entering the vote-counting business.

"That was the biggest," Lowe said. "The minute we started seeing results go backwards, we stopped everything."

What corrupted the memory card was never discovered, Lowe said.

Though the negative votes later were found to be erroneous, the subtraction helped push the major television networks' decisions to call Florida for George W. Bush that election night, according to an Oct. 5 Rolling Stone magazine article.

Diebold spokesman Bear said the memory card problems do not hurt the integrity of Volusia County elections.

On Friday, when McFall reported that the number of ballots cast did not match the number of signatures at polling places, she attributed the difference to people who decided not to wait for a memory card to be replaced on Election Day.

A 2001 e-mail from Volusia County officials to Diebold described how a poll worker unwittingly lost more than 300 ballots when a memory card failed in the middle of reading the ballots during the 2000 election. A hand count due to the close presidential race caught the missing ballots.

That was an unforgettable error, Lowe said.

"It's very aggravating, and it causes more work, but it certainly doesn't mean any votes were lost," Lowe said

During this month's election, Pynchon, who helped found the Florida Fair Elections Coalition, tried to keep track of the number of memory card failures. She persistently peppered election officials with questions about the security measures being used to track the cards.

A Feb. 14 report by the state of California stated that five computer scientists found the cards can be modified to change election results.

Bear said policies and procedures followed by election officials would prevent altered cards from being ed into the machines.

Diebold plans to introduce changes to the voting machine's software to address security issues and memory card failures, Bear said.

In January, Bear said, Diebold project managers will work with Volusia County officials to determine the cause of the higher failure rate with its memory cards. They'll look at maintenance, operation and installation procedures and look for any problems with the machines themselves.

"It could be any number of issues," Bear said.

mary.moewe@news-jrnl.com

At a Glance:

Diebold's Failed Memory Cards

Flagler County: 46 Diebold Election System optical scan units; 1 memory card failure

Seminole County:155 units; 3 memory card failures

Brevard County: 220 units; 1 memory card failure

Putnam County: 57 units; 2 memory card failures

Leon County: 186 units; no memory card failure

Volusia County: 231 units; 12 memory card failures

SOURCE: County election officials