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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
11/3/2004 Machine malfunction MT Flathead County. Errors in the programming for the optical scan tabulation system. Two precincts showed no opposition to I-147 (which would reverse the ban on using cyanide in mining). Next precinct scanned, same result. Then it got worse. New returns show a precinct voted well beyond the number of registered voters. Story Archive
11/16/2006 Machine malfunction MT ESS Flathead County. Optical scanner memory cartridges read by the computers counted all votes for just one candidate. Story Archive
10/15/2004 Machine malfunction NC Craven County. Voters' choices register incorrectly on the touch screen. The county official attempted to recalibrate the screens, but two machines had to be taken out of service. Story
10/21/2004 Machine malfunction NC Forsyth County. Precinct chair says his ballot was not tallied correctly during a demonstration of the e-voting machines at an early voting site. Story: Early voting going briskly Archive
10/21/2004 Machine malfunction NC Forsyth County. Kathy Cooper, director of elections, says problems with batteries dying on computers at early voting polls have already been resolved. Story: Early voting going briskly Archive
11/4/2004 Machine malfunction NC Unilect More than 4,500 Carteret County votes have been lost on a Unilect electronic voting machine. The vendor said it would hold 10,500 ballots. It would only hold 3,005 and 7,530 people cast their ballots on it. Story Archive

Nov. 30. Carteret County will hold another election to determine the winner of the agricultural commissioner's race. Story Archive

11/4/2004 Machine malfunction NC Mecklenburg County. Before the election, the county election office said 102,109 people voted early or returned valid absentee ballots. Unofficial results from election night showed 106,064 of those votes. Story Archive Machines mistallied.
11/4/2004 Machine malfunction NC ESS In Craven County, all vote totals in nine of the county's 26 precincts were electronically doubled, increasing the totals for president by 11,283 more than the number of votes cast. Correcting the mistake changed the outcome of at least one race. ES&S Votronic machines used. Automatic warning of double-counting didn't work. Story Archive
11/4/2004 Machine malfunction NC In Onslow County, a software error changed the order of finish in the race for seats on the county commission. The error didn't change who won the seats, just the order in which they finished. A floppy disk that compiles voting data from the counting machines was programmed incorrectly. Story Archive
11/4/2004 Machine malfunction NC In Yadkin County, about 1,000 ballots were accidentally counted twice. Story Archive
11/9/2004 Machine malfunction NC Unilect Carteret County. More than 4,500 votes irretrievably lost in coastal Carteret County could trigger a new statewide election if the official margin of victory in two Council of State races is close enough, state election officials said Monday. Story Archive
11/9/2004 Machine malfunction NC ESS Craven County. Problems with Electronic Systems and Software Inc. iVotronic voting machines surfaced in one-stop early voting, requiring all screens to be replaced. Story
11/9/2004 Machine malfunction NC ESS Craven County. "A master terminal at the Vanceboro one-stop voting site did not require a password and resulted in an incorrect total in the presidential returns there." ES&S again. Story Archive
11/10/2004 Machine malfunction NC ESS In Guilford County, ES&S early voting machines had capacity problems, which affected anywhere from 6,000 to 20,000 ballots. Story Archive

The totals were so large, the tabulation computer threw some numbers away. Retallying changed two outcomes and gave an additional 22000 votes to Kerry. Story Archive

ES&S explained that the Unity 2.2 tally software reached 32,767 (32K) and began subtracting from the totals (same as in Broward County). ES&S had known about the problem but not told its customers. Letter from ES&S (603K)

11/10/2004 Machine malfunction NC Sequoia Buncombe County. Sequoia Advantage touch screen machines failed to display one of the races in two precincts. Officials estimate that as many as 500 or 600 voters were not given the opportunity to vote in the school board race. Story Archive
11/13/2004 Machine malfunction NC Gaston County. About 12,000 votes cast in Gaston County have not yet been counted, elections director Sandra Page said Tuesday. Page said most early and absentee votes were not included in the county's unofficial election results because of a procedural error. The inclusion of the votes in the county's results, expected Tuesday afternoon, could change the outcome of several local and statewide races. Story1 Story2 Story3 Archive3

The county pays a technician from Diebold to operate its systems on Election Day. That person was in charge of transferring early votes from electronic storage to the counting computer. Diebold believes the transmission was interrupted, said spokesman David Bear. Story Archive

11/13/2004 Machine malfunction NC Diebold After data was transmitted from the precincts to the central station, it was discovered that there was no data for the Dallas precinct in the GEMS database. Office records from election night, kept by a staff member, showed that information was received, Gaston County Elections Director Sandra Page said. She believes the computer system recorded a successful transmission without receiving any data. Story Archive
11/13/2004 Machine malfunction NC Gaston County. The entire Dallas precinct (1209 votes) was omitted from the reported totals. Story Archive
11/23/2006 Machine malfunction NC ESS Guilford County. "Accessible" features of the iVotronic voting machine failed to provide independent voting for a visually impaired woman who tried it. Story Archive
12/15/2006 Machine malfunction NC ESS Guilford County. About 9 percent of the printers attached to the county’s voting machines had a jam or other problem. In many cases, that problem made the paper record generated unusable for purposes of a state-mandated audit, according to county elections director George Gilbert. Story Archive
10/29/2007 Machine malfunction NC ESS Guilford County. ES&S iVotronic voting machines fail in early voting. Affected voters had to choose whether to come back later or vote provisionally. "George Gilbert, director of the Guilford County Board of Elections confirms that due to a computer glitch, all five of the machines at Bur-Mil would not display the correct information to allow citizens from Summerfield, Oak Ridge, Whitsett, Pleasant Garden and Sedalia to vote. Gilbert says citizens who attempted to vote were urged to come back later, and were given a provisional absentee ballot so they could vote manually if they were unable to do so." Story Archive
10/29/2007 Machine malfunction NC ESS Guilford County. iVotronics. "George Gilbert, director of the Guilford County Board of Elections confirms that due to a computer glitch, all five of the machines at Bur-Mil would not display the correct information to allow citizens from Summerfield, Oak Ridge, Whitsett, Pleasant Garden and Sedalia to vote." Story Archive
5/9/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Mecklenburg County. About 2,400 absentee ballots were counted twice by the ES&S Unity tabulation system. Correcting the inaccuracy didn't change any outcomes. Story Archive
5/9/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Wake County. About 37,000 optical scan ballots were counted twice by the ES&S Unity tabulation system. The early voting and absentee ballots were counted as part of the individual voters precincts and again as a whole. Correcting the inaccuracy didn't change any outcomes. Story Archive
5/14/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Onslow County. About 4,000 (Model 100) optical scan ballots from early voting -- apparently uploaded correctly -- weren't counted by the tabulation software. A state representative noticed the low number of votes from some one-stop voting sites and the county investigated. Rose Whitehurst, director of the Onslow County Board of Elections, said what happened was that when she uploaded the votes, she thought the votes were counted.

"When we started looking over the report, we found that the votes didn't all go into the software," she said. "We started doing an audit and ran through the information (and found that) both one-stops weren't counted." Story Archive

11/1/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Guilford County. Vote-flipping on the iVotronic touch screen machine. "three more voters told Guilford County GOP Chairman Bill Wright that machines switched presidential votes at Pleasant Garden Town Hall and Friendly Center in Greensboro. With help, voters corrected their ballots." Story Archive
11/5/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Rockingham County. The central tabulator failed to read the memory cards from the optical scanners at five of the six one-stop voting sites. The county uses M100 scanners. Story Archive
11/5/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Polk County. Results for the County Board of Elections flip flop twice as the county struggles with a malfunction in the computer reporting system. Rebooting seems to help, but then results flip again. Then winners are declared. County officials speculate that some of the precincts were counted twice by the software. Story Archive
11/5/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Craven County. Three technicians from Print Elect "jury-rigged an M-650 rapid counter with a paper clip to help speed up the absentee ballot counting process." Story Archive
11/6/2008 Machine malfunction NC Buncombe County. An unknown computer malfunction delayed the posting of election results on the State web site. “My understanding is that it was some sort of communication with the state board of elections,” said Jones Byrd, chairman of the Buncombe board of elections. Story Archive
11/8/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Forsyth County. An error occurred while uploading data from Precincts 601 and 604, causing incomplete vote data to be included in the initial results. The article describe the error: "[Rob Coffman, Forsyth County's director of elections,] said that the two precincts did correctly record the votes cast for each candidate, but when the results were fed into a computer that tallies all the returns, a mistake caused the software to omit results for the 74th N.C. House District in those two precincts. That, in turn, caused the vote totals in some other races to be incorrect. The corrected totals for the two precincts will result in slight changes in the totals of a number of other political contests." Story Archive
11/13/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Craven County. A memory card error caused only part of the main one-stop (early voting) ballots to be uploaded from one site. Revised numbers raise the turnout from 60% to 65% and may change the outcome of a State Representative race. An error in the reporting software also incorrectly categorized some ballots as absentee. The county uses iVotronic touch screen machines and M100 scanners. Story Archive One of the machines at the Cove City early voting site had a dead battery, which officials originally thought was the cause of the misreporting. Story2 Archive2

Update 11/14/08. Officials say that coding errors, made by ES&S and distributed by Print Elect, caused the software to read the data incorrectly. Four ballot styles reflecting the district in which voters of particular precinct could participate and the "Geo-codes" were not entered correctly and produced reporting problems. Story Archive

11/14/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Burke County. Paper jammed on the iVotronic touch screen machines. Story Archive
11/17/2008 Machine malfunction NC ESS Craven County. More problems emerge. The article says 342 ballots are missing from the No. 7 Township Fire and Rescue early voting site. A total of 7,575 authorizations to vote were identified but staff can find ballots, tapes, flash cards or personal electronic ballot records for only 7,233. Story Archive

Update 11/18/08. The missing ballots were found in a personal electronic ballot counter used to record first day of one-stop votes at No. & Township fire and Rescue in Grantham. The PEB was marked "spare" and overlooked originally. Story Archive

11/3/2009 Machine malfunction NC ESS Guilford County. Votes for Bill Knight for mayor were flipped to Yvonne Johnson on the iVotronic touch screen machine. Officials claimed it was a calibration problem. Story
11/4/2009 Machine malfunction NC ESS Mount Airy (Surry County). Modems at two precincts failed and poll workers called in the results. Totals were transposed at the county office, causing the losing candidate to be announced initially as winner of the mayor's race. Story Archive
11/5/2004 Machine malfunction NE ESS Sarpy County. A computer problem doubled the votes in half the county's precincts, adding over 10,000 phantom votes to the totals. The county uses ES&S vote tallying software. As of 11/4, the cause had not been determined. The disc loaded correctly on one computer, but not on another. Story1 Story2 Archive1 Archive1
11/14/2004 Machine malfunction NE Lancaster County. While machines correctly fed themselves just one ballot at a time, their software at times incorrectly detected two ballots. The machines in all cases stopped short of actually counting two ballots, County Election Commissioner David Shively said, and instead responded by shutting down. Democratic party alleges there is no proof that the mechanical glitches that slowed counting Tuesday did not also skew the final figures. Story Archive
1/12/2008 Machine malfunction NH Diebold Hanover, Exeter, Nashua, and Manchester Counties. Problems with the Premier (Diebold) optical scan machines reported by the officials in all four counties. Break down of the visor that guides write-in votes into the right bin, and memory card failures. Story
3/13/2008 Machine malfunction NH Salem. A faulty keyboard interfered with the entry of votes collected in the precincts, causing votes to be mis-entered and an incorrect outcome to be reported initially. Story Archive
Records: 281-320 of 616
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