| Date |
Problem Type |
State
|
Vendor
|
Description
|
| 11/8/2005 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
ESS |
Elizabeth City. ES&S iVotronic touch screen machines switched votes on the screen. In early voting, 42 blank ballots were recorded in this one-contest election. On election day 18 blank ballots were recorded. The margin of victory was 14 votes, 17 after provisional were counted. No meaningful recount is possible on the paperless machines.
Story1
Story2
Archive2 |
| 11/8/2005 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
|
Spotsylvania. The ballot counting machines wasn't working properly, and some ballots had to be counted by hand. "A faulty memory pack on the system at Wilderness was rejecting ballots with even the slightest fray or fold in the paper, said Shirley Boggs, Spotsylvania's registrar."
Story
Archive |
| 10/24/2006 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
Hart InterCivic |
Alexandria, Falls Church, and Charlottesville. The review page on the Hart InterCivic eSlate (electronic voting machine) cuts off the last part of the candidates' names, as well as their party affiliation. For example, James H. "Jim" Webb appears as James H. "Jim", while James T. "Jim" Hurysz appears as James T."Jim". Officials attribute this to a larger font size. These jurisdictions have had this problem since purchasing the machines in 2002.
Editor's note: The eSlate does not allow voters to adjust the font size on the screen (as required by 2002 federal standards), so they are unable to read the last names of many candidates on the review screen where they confirm the accuracy of their votes.
Story
Archive
Falls Church officials say they complained about the problem a year ago and Hart InterCivic did nothing to fix it.
Story
Archive |
| 11/9/2006 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
AVS |
Fairfax County. Vote-switching on the WINVote e-voting machines. Voters report that when they touch the screen for one U.S. Senate candidate, the other would be selected.
Archive |
| 11/8/2007 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
Sequoia |
Scott County. More than 30 of the county's 45 electronic voting machines displayed errors instead of working properly when they first started up in the morning. The machines had been "upgraded" with new firmware that displays larger fonts, but the technician from Atlantic Election Services who installed the new firmware missed a step and the installation went awry.
AES managed to get one or two machines per precinct working. "Each machine required software changes, as well as a diagnostic check that took about 12 minutes." Software changes in the middle of an election!
Story
Archive
Story2
Archive2 |
| 11/4/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
AVS |
Fairfax County. "A handful" of memory cards didn't work when the WinVote machines were opened. Paper ballots will be used until the problem is corrected.
Story
Archive |
| 3/11/2009 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
AVS |
Fairfax County. One of two WINvote paperless electronic voting machines broke down in one polling place while officials were tallying the votes. The malfunction left the outcome of the hotly contested race too close to call. Elections officials halted their efforts, sealed the malfunctioning machine and said they would resume their efforts to count the remaining ballots today.
Story
Archive
Update: 3/18/09. At the Fairfax County canvass, observers learned that among other problems, when the polls opened, the voting machine showed that there were no votes recorded -- which was as it should be. However, of those "zero" votes, three were for Republican John Cook, two for Democratic Ilryong Moon, one for independent Carey C. Campbell and one for a write-in candidate. Despite the obvious problem that there were seven unexplained votes at the beginning of the day and a mismatch of hundreds of votes at the end of the day, the county Board of Elections certified the results.
Story
Archive
Story2
Archive2 |
| 6/10/2009 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
AVS |
Fairfax County. John McCann, 54, an attorney who is blind, said the audio technology malfunctioned on the machine he was using. Fairfax County uses the AVS WinVote paperless electronic voting machine, purported to be accessible.
Story
Archive |
| 11/3/2009 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
Sequoia |
Essex, Somerset and Gloucester counties. A "handfull" of Sequoia AVC Advantage e-voting machines malfunctioned at start up in all three counties.
Story
Archive |
| 11/3/2009 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
|
A voter reports that the touch screen machine flipped votes for Lt Gov and Attorney General from Democratic to Republican. The summary screen was wrong and the only choice the voter saw was the Next button. The voter received assistance from the poll worker. |
| 11/3/2009 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
Unilect |
Augusta County. After just 5 votes a Unilect Patriot voting machine had to be shut down because of a malfunction. Two machines were left to carry the load.
Story
Archive |
| 11/13/2009 |
Machine malfunction |
VA |
Diebold |
Lancaster County. Multiple AccuVote ballot scanners malfunctioned. They didn't process the votes, nor would they print poll tapes.
Story
Archive |
| 11/2/2004 |
Poor design |
VA |
|
Several voters left their respective polling places without completing their electronic vote, and those votes had to be canceled.
Story
Archive |
| 11/11/2004 |
Poor design |
VA |
AVS |
Roanoke. Some ballots were voided because voters left WinVote machines before pushing a flashing red button to record their votes.
Story
Archive |
| 11/4/2008 |
Provisional ballots |
VA |
|
Thousands of voters in Virginia found themselves stuck in long lines today because of broken machines and inadequate polling site resources. To help move things along, some of them were reportedly given provisional ballots -- but voting by provisional ballot significantly lowers the chance their vote will be counted.
Story
Archive |
| 11/2/2008 |
Registration errors |
VA |
|
Reported to VotersUnite: I looked up my registration on line and found I wasn't there. I called my local registrar's office and we figured out that they had the last 4 digits of my social security number wrong, but that I was indeed registered and would have had no trouble at the voting booth even if they hadn't corrected the problem. When my partner looked up his registration online, it was the same story. He called the registrar, and they had transposed 2 numbers in the last 4 of his social also. |
| 11/4/2008 |
Too few machines |
VA |
AVS |
Reported to 1-866-OURVOTE: Blacksburg in Montgomery County. Voters are calling to say there are too few machines to handle the large crowds.
Story
|
| 2/27/2008 |
Vote suppression |
VA |
|
Chesterfield County. Nine precincts ran out of paper ballots and allowed voters to cast handwritten ballots. The Board of Elections refused to count the 299 Democratic ballots, saying it would violate state law.
Story
Archive |
| 10/25/2004 |
Ballot printing |
WA |
|
Chelan County. Absentee ballots must be reprinted. The auditor did not include the names of two judges, because she thought they didn't need to be on the ballot since they ran unopposed in the primary. Story Archive |
| 11/1/2004 |
Ballot printing |
WA |
|
Franklin County. About 25 absentee ballots were mailed without the secrecy sleeve. Voters are asked to place the ballot in a plain white envelope or request a secrecy sleeve from the elections office.
Story |
| 10/29/2006 |
Ballot printing |
WA |
|
Skagit County. Ballots were printed without the legally required text describing initiatives. This was discovered only when a voter in Precinct 125 noticed it and reported it to the county and the Secretary of State.
Story
Details
|
| 11/29/2004 |
Canvass anomalies |
WA |
|
Franklin County. 84 more votes for Governor than the number of ballots cast.
Story
Archive |
| 11/29/2004 |
Canvass anomalies |
WA |
|
Franklin County. 84 more votes for reported Governor than ballots reported.
Story
Letter to SoS
Archive |
| 12/11/2004 |
Canvass anomalies |
WA |
|
With 17 counties' hand-counts completed, 249 new votes have been found for governor, and 11 votes have either changed or disappeared.
Story |
| 12/13/2004 |
Canvass anomalies |
WA |
|
King County. County Elections Director Dean Logan announced that 561 ballots were wrongly rejected during the initial canvas. [Note King County voted 3 to 2 for Gregoire, the Democratic candidate for Governor. So, it is likely that these votes would have changed the outcome of the governor's race in the machine recount.]
Story
Archive |
| 12/18/2004 |
Canvass anomalies |
WA |
|
King County. Director of Elections Dean Logan discovers hundreds of ballots that have not been previously counted that he believes should be included in the manual recount of the Governor's race.
Story
Archive |
| 12/23/2004 |
Canvass anomalies |
WA |
|
In the Governor's race, a hand recount of nearly 3 million ballots overturned the outcome reported by machine counts. Republican Dino Rossi received 261 more votes than Democrat Christine Gregoire in the first machine count; Rossi received 42 more votes in the second machine recount and lost to Gregroire by 10 votes in the manual recount. 566 additional ballots in King County raised Gregoire's margin to 130.
Story |
| 1/5/2005 |
Canvass anomalies |
WA |
|
King County. 3,539 phantom votes -- more ballots than voters -- show up as Republican examine the election for anomalies and compare rosters to ballots.
Story
Archive |
| 1/11/2005 |
Canvass anomalies |
WA |
Diebold |
King County. Some voters appear twice on the registration rolls. The discrepancy between signed-in voters and number of ballots was attributed to people who were probably permitted to cast poll-site ballots without signing the poll book.
Story |
| 11/2/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
WA |
Sequoia |
Snohomish County. Voters in at least four polling precincts in Snohomish County said they have encountered problems with the Sequoia electronic voting machines. When they touched the screen to vote for a candidate, an indicator showed they had selected the opposing candidate. It took at least four attempts before the indicator showed the correct candidate.
Story
Archive |
| 11/16/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
WA |
ESS |
Grays Harbor County. Elections officials started recounting about 28,000 ballots on Tuesday after the ES&S Unity reporting system showed too many votes. After ballots were counted, the results were saved on computer disks and downloaded into another computer to keep a running tally. Some of the disks were apparently downloaded twice by mistake. The Unity software is supposed to prevent that from happening.
Story1
Archive1
Story2
Archive2
|
| 12/1/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
WA |
ESS |
Skagit County. An investigation of anomalies in the recount of the governor's race led county officials to discover, from ES&S, that a vote is counted incorrectly in approximately 1 in 10,000 ovals read by their high-speed optical scanner. Since the governor's race had four options, the estimate is that 1 in 2500 votes was counted incorrectly. Votes counted incorrectly in Skagit County alone amount to half the margin between the top two candidates.
Story
Archive |
| 11/6/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
WA |
Sequoia |
Pierce County. When the office ran the new voting tabulation softwareTuesday night to count the ranked choice voting ballots, it was so slow that technicians had to add memory to the computer system.
Story
Archive |
| 9/3/2009 |
Machine malfunction |
WA |
Diebold |
King County. County officials noticed that the new Premier scanners failed to read ovals that were lightly filled in or incompletely filled in.
Story
Archive |
| 11/29/2004 |
Malfeasance |
WA |
|
The Washington Secretary of State won't investigate anomalies in the vote counting process, pointed out by Gregoire, one of the candidates in a virtual tie for Governor, and refuses to give counties time to investigate.
Story
Archive |
| 10/16/2004 |
Paper ballots (late) |
WA |
|
King County is late mailing out absentee ballots. "After consulting with the Prosecuting Attorney's Office and the Secretary of State's Office in Olympia, Logan said he concluded the mailing deadline applies only to voters whose names already have been entered into the registration system." So newly registered voters ballots are "late" but not late.
Story |
| 10/28/2004 |
Paper ballots (late) |
WA |
|
Thurston County. Some absentee voters haven't received ballots mailed in mid-October.
Story Archive |
| 11/5/2004 |
Poor design |
WA |
|
Thurston County. The Thurston County elections staff recounted an estimated 81,000 ballots first tallied Election Day after learning that computer software wasn't set up properly for the first count. In this case, an "F2 key" was not punched when elections workers set up the vote-counting machines prior to Tuesday's election, Wyman said.
Story
Archive |
| 11/13/2004 |
Provisional ballots |
WA |
|
Washington state Democrats, sued election officials Friday in the state's largest county. The lawsuit would block election officials in King County, home to Seattle, from discarding about 900 provisional ballots. [Note: they won the suit.]
Story
Archive
|
| 1/7/2005 |
Provisional ballots |
WA |
|
King County. 348 provisional ballots were mistakenly run through the poll-site voting machines without verification
Story |
