By M.C. MOEWE   Daytona Beach News-Journal   21 September 2007
Staff Writer

With early voting for city elections just nine days away, more faulty Volusia County voting machine memory cards will be replaced in an effort to minimize the number of failures that have plagued elections here since at least 2000.

Faulty cards are being replaced at no cost to the county because of a manufacturing problem found in the cards, said Mark Radke, director of marketing for Premier Election Solutions, the new name of Diebold Election Systems Inc.'s election unit.

Tests last week uncovered the need to replace another five memory cards even after Diebold replaced more than 300 last year.

"We are doing everything humanly possible," Radke said.

Diebold replaced Volusia County's 311 optical-scan memory cards in June 2006, Radke said.

"It had something to do with the welding or gluing in the unit," he said, explaining that the faulty assembly creates intermittent problems. "We have tested the new cards extensively, and we think the new cards behave really well."

But 11 of those new cards failed during the November 2006 election, a 4 percent failure rate about four times what Radke described as an acceptable failure rate. Volusia County Chairman Frank Bruno called for an investigation into the failures.

Despite the glitches, Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall said Volusia County does not have any more memory card problems than other Florida counties.

"I truly don't think they do," McFall said. "We have it as seamless as possible."

Yet, after the 2004 presidential election, Volusia had 25 memory card failures, according to an e-mail from Diebold's Florida-based representative Mark Earley to a Volusia elections office staffer.

"The number of memory card failures you report is more than the rest of our customers in Florida combined," Earley wrote.

Votes are not lost due to memory card failures, but the problem costs staff time because they must reprogram and replace cards, McFall said. Also, any ballots that were scanned before the card failed must be scanned again.

"The big problem with the replacement of cards is the down time during the election period," said Bruno, who is also on the canvassing board.

The machine cannot read ballots until the faulty card is replaced, but the ballots are put into a compartment on the side of the machine and read after the new card is put in, McFall said.

In February, McFall participated in a survey Diebold was doing concerning the number of memory card failures throughout Florida.

Radke said he did not have the results from that survey but was told most counties have a 1 percent failure rate. McFall noted in that survey that, of the 249 cards used during the 2006 election, there were five memory card problems in pre-election testing, three during early voting and eight on Election Day.

Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Mike Ertel said 10 of the 170 cards used in 2006 in that county had problems during pre-election testing, seven during early voting and nine on Election Day.

Ertel's staff prepares backup cards for each machine on Election Day to minimize the time it takes to get a machine back up and running.

"The cards are not cheap, but because of the failure rate with these cards it's a good investment," Ertel said.

In Volusia, the replacement card is programmed with the proper ballot style and then tested for accuracy after the failure is reported, said McFall, adding that can take 15 to 30 minutes. Then election staff must transport the card to the precinct.

Voters don't notice the problem because ballots are put into a side compartment on the machine until the card is replaced, McFall said.