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Election Problem Log - 2004 to 2009
Check out our other problem logs!
VotersUnite! began this problem log with the November 2004 election. It continued its compilation of problems reported in the media by adding news stories about subsequent elections, through 2009. See also: Failures by vendor and Failures by state.
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Date Problem Type State
Vendor
Description
11/2/2004 Machine malfunction IN ESS Indianapolis. One of the precinct's voting machines was down for a time, but it had been fixed. Story Archive
11/2/2004 Machine malfunction IN ESS In Marion County, some optical scanners were not working. Still, officials said that did not prevent people from voting, as they were still able to fill out paper ballots that would be fed into the machines when they were operating. Story Archive
11/2/2004 Machine malfunction IN ESS Vanderburgh county. ES&S iVotronic electronic voting machines were on the fritz Tuesday at some polling locations. County Clerk Marsha Abell blamed poll workers for causing dozens of voting machines to freeze. Voting at Dexter Elementary came almost to a complete standstill when three of the four machines crashed. At Tekoppel Elementary, two of the four machines broke. Story Archive
11/4/2004 Machine malfunction IN ESS LaPorte. Software flaw reported the total for every precinct to report 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters. The county still doesn't know the cause of the problem and is waiting to get a patch from ES&S. Story Archive
11/11/2004 Machine malfunction IN Franklin County. Optical scan equipment counted straight-party votes for Democratic candidates as Libertarian votes; 9 counties may be affected. Democrats discovered the error in Franklin County, where ballots will be counted again tonight. The county's election equipment vendor, Fidlar, notified officials Wednesday of the error. Libertarian candidates received 7 to 8 percent of the votes in Franklin County, which is about 30 miles south of Richmond. Story1 Archive1

A programming error in the Fidlar optical scan system caused the miscount. One race was overturned when the program was corrected. Story2 Archive2

11/11/2004 Machine malfunction IN ESS Vanderburgh County. A power cord malfunctioned, delaying the vote-counting on ES&S iVotronics. Story Archive
11/13/2004 Machine malfunction IN Diebold Franklin County. Inadequate testing.Tests with Fidlar's optical-scan equipment before the election found no problems. Yet during the election, it gave straight-party Democrat votes to Libertarians, affecting the outcome of the county commissioners' race. Story Archive
11/16/2004 Machine malfunction IN Diebold Ripley County discovered an error with Fidlar Election Co. optical scan memory cards, Ripley County Clerk Ginger Bradford said. The memory cards that count the votes in optical scanners had the wrong precinct labels, so the cards were sent back to the company to be reprogrammed. Story Archive
11/16/2004 Machine malfunction IN ESS Brown County, which uses ES&S optical scanners, considered recounting votes in one precinct because the tally tape produced by the scanner showed 63 unvoted ballots. However, the law doesn't allow the election board to reject certification by the precinct board, so they didn't do anything. Story Archive
11/16/2004 Machine malfunction IN ESS Carroll County, with optical scanners from Election Systems and Software (ES&S), had to handcount county council votes in its 19 precincts on election day. The Indiana Election Commission determined the computer program didn't comply with Indiana law for that office, Carroll County Clerk Laura Sterrett said. Story Archive
11/23/2004 Machine malfunction IN ESS Vanderburgh County. At several polling places, the number of people signing in to vote Nov. 2 exceeded the vote totals, while at other places votes outnumbered signatures. The county uses ES&S iVotronic touch screen machines. Story Archive
10/21/2006 Machine malfunction IN VTI Randolph County. Voting Technologies Internation (VTI) e-voting machines fail to tabulate correctly -- first in the primary, then in testing for the general election. Story Archive
10/30/2006 Machine malfunction IN MicroVote Monroe County, using the MicroVote touch screen. "In Monroe County, a glitch in how the ballots are read could confuse certain straight-party voters, officials said. So poll workers plan to advise those voters on exactly what their vote will mean and how to cast it." Story Archive
11/7/2006 Machine malfunction IN MicroVote Delaware County. MicroVote touch screen machines weren't operating at the start of the day in 75 precincts. Delaware County Clerk Karen Wenger says start cards that activate the machines for voters were programmed incorrectly by the company that installed the software. She says technicians are working with precincts one-by-one over the telephone to get the problem fixed. Delays have been as long as three hours. Story Archive Story2 Story3 Archive3

11/17/06 update. MicroVote supplies the machines and technical servics, programs the machines, tabulates the results, and even counts the provisional ballots. The County is considering "whether county election officials should program and tabulate vote results." Story

11/8/2006 Machine malfunction IN MicroVote LaPorte County. Microvote Infinities were not operating properly, caused delays, and poll stayed open late. Story Archive
11/8/2006 Machine malfunction IN ESS Marion County. ES&S Optech 3PEagles scanners did not work correctly for early voting in more than 100 precincts. Problems connecting the scanners to the iVotronic touch screens. Story Archive
11/8/2006 Machine malfunction IN ESS Marion County. In Indiana's Marion County, which includes Indianapolis, election officials switched to paper ballots in 175 of the county's 914 precincts because they couldn't operate the ES&S iVotronic electronic-voting machines. Story Archive
11/10/2006 Machine malfunction IN Marion County. Doris Anne Sadler, Marion County Clerk, is unable to retrieve the votes from 520 ES&S iVotronic machines. The explanation? That is because the voting machine maker, ES&S, had programmed the machines for Pennsylvania's polls, which were open from 6:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. Story
Archive
5/9/2007 Machine malfunction IN ESS Marion County. Polls could not be kept open late because the machines were not programmed to operate after 6:00.!! Story Archive
5/10/2007 Machine malfunction IN MicroVote Lake County. Problems getting results after a power outage. Difficulty operating machines and retrieving results. "Shamo said there is a possibility a small number of votes remain uncounted on 34 electronic voting machines that poll workers may have had problems operating." Story Archive
5/10/2007 Machine malfunction IN MicroVote Lake County. "Computers froze in the election office Tuesday night when officials attempted to electronically transfer the tallies from individual voting machines to the mainframe designed to compile the results. Recognizing the glitch in the program that reads the cartridges from the machines, elections workers began the tedious task of manually entering the vote totals from remaining vote machine cartridges." Story Archive
11/6/2007 Machine malfunction IN ESS Marion County. Problems with some iVotronic touch screen machines cause "those polling places" to use paper ballots. Story Archive

"At one time about 83 of the 529 touch screens weren't working. By noon, the number of defective machines had been reduced to 66 and by 4 p.m. all were operating again." Story Archive Story2

Some of the problems were caused by batteries not being properly charged. Others were caused when the memory cards were inserted upside down. Story Archive Archive2

11/8/2007 Machine malfunction IN Microvote LaPorte County. Microvote Infinity electronic voting machines were programmed with the wrong date and did not start up at five polling places. Technicians corrected the problems by 7:30 am. Story Archive
5/6/2008 Machine malfunction IN ESS Marion County. Two polling places opened without Democratic ballots, and the touch screen available as a backup in one of them failed. Ballots were printed and delivered before 8:00. Story Archive
5/6/2008 Machine malfunction IN Diebold Tippecanoe County. Two of the voter access card encoders at the Dayton vote center froze up and had to be replaced. Story Archive Story2 Archive2
5/6/2008 Machine malfunction IN Diebold Tippecanoe County. An internet connection problem caused voter check-in to be done briefly by telephone. Story Archive
11/5/2008 Machine malfunction IN Diebold Tippecanoe County. One of the memory cards holding early votes from the touch screen machine did not upload properly. Story Archive
11/6/2008 Machine malfunction IN ESS Wayne County. When local officials tried to tally the vote they received a "system error" message. They stopped the count, secured the votes and then had to wait for an answer to the problem from company officials at Election Systems & Software, which provided the computer system for the local election. The call to officials in Omaha, Neb., took well over an hour. Story Archive
11/2/2006 Machine malfunction KS ESS Sedgwick County. ES&S iVotronic touch screen voting machines are broken down at all sites except two. Story
11/5/2008 Machine malfunction KS ESS Crawford County. A programming defect between the ballot cards (run through the M100) and the iVotronic electronic voting machines in three precincts at a Pittsburg ward may have switched the votes in certain local races. Story Archive

Update 11/7/08: The scanners were not programmed to handle the rotation of candidates on the ballots. The error affects four races; only the County Attorney's race is close. Story Archive Story2 Archive2

Update 11/9/08. Officials found another tabulation error. One of the backup scanners might not have read votes on the Arma sales tax question. Story Archive

Update 11/12/08. Only 14 votes separates the two candidates for the County Attorney's race. The county will hand recount that race on the nearly 16,000 ballots scanned by the M100 optical scanners. Story Archive

4/8/2009 Machine malfunction KS ESS Saline County. Vote-flipping on the iVotronic touch screen machine. "The problem was this: When a voter pressed a certain candidate's bar on the voting machine's screen, the candidate above the selected candidate instead received the checkmark." Story Archive

Update 4/10/09. The county has discovered that vote-flipping is a known problem that affects 22,619 ES&S iVotronic voting machines, whose screens were made by Bergquist Co. In October 2008, the Brennan Center warned the Secretaries of State in 16 states that the screens had "calibration drift." ES&S admits that calibration may not hold through the entire election day. Story Archive

11/5/2006 Machine malfunction KY Hart InterCivic Calloway County. Vote-switching on the review screen of the Hart InterCivic eSlate. Straight-ticket Democratic votes were switched to Republicans in all the contested races. Story
11/9/2006 Machine malfunction KY Hart InterCivic Bell, Bullitt, Breckinridge, Henry, LaRue, Livingston, Marion, Pulaski, Union, Warren, Wayne, Webster and Woodford Counties. Scanners used to read absentee ballots weren't working properly. Story Archive
11/9/2006 Machine malfunction KY Hart InterCivic Scott, Woodford, Bourbon, Boyle, Bullitt, Daviess, Grant and Nelson Counties. Trouble combining totals from the old Danaher 1242 machines and the new Hart InterCivic eSlate machines caused headaches and long hours for election officials. Democratic House Speaker Jody Richards yesterday called the new electronic voting machines "horrible." Story Archive Story2 Archive2
11/9/2006 Machine malfunction KY Hart InterCivic Vote-switching on the Hart InterCivic eSlate e-voting machine was reported to the Attorney General. The eSlate is not a touch screen machine. Story Archive
5/22/2008 Machine malfunction KY Hart Bullitt County. eSlate e-voting machines, used by voters with disabilities and others, "had trouble reading memory cards." Story Archive
11/4/2008 Machine malfunction KY Hart InterCivic Kenton County. The Kenton County Board of Elections has halted voting on the eSlate electronic voting machines (supplied and maintained by Harp Election Services) because they are not properly recording straight-ticket voting. Voters complained that straight-ticket voting in the State Senate race between Republican incumbent Jack Westwood and Democrat Kathy Groob was not being counted. Story Archive

Update: A judge ordered the county to shut down 108 eSlate machines. The malfunctions could affect the tightly contested state Senate race. Story Archive Story2

Update 11/9/08: Poll workers had continued to allow voters to use the machines so the county had to separate out the straight party votes. In an unusual display of accountability, Harp Election Services accepted responsibility for misprogramming the machines, and Kenton County Clerk Rodney Eldridge accepted responsibility for not checking the operation of the straight-party selections on the machine before the election. Story Archive

11/5/2008 Machine malfunction KY Danaher Madison County. A data disc containing votes from a Berea precinct voting machine (presumably the Shouptronic 1242) could not be read. The county uses two types of voting machines - the Shouptronic and the Hart InterCivic eSlate - and the program that combines the votes from them won't generate a total until all discs are read. So the county was unable to obtain any totals until the problem was resolved. Story Archive
11/2/2004 Machine malfunction LA Sequoia Sequoia machine malfunctions are rampant in Louisiana. The list is MUCH too long to duplicate here. Story Archive

Update: Officials in Louisiana reported "minimal" problems, said Scott Madere, a spokesman for the secretary of state's Elections Office. Story Archive

11/2/2004 Machine malfunction LA Sequoia State election officials received about 200 complaints of problems with machines, including two confirmed reports of Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines in New Orleans Parish that were not working. Story Archive
Records: 201-240 of 616
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