| Date |
Problem Type |
State
|
Vendor
|
Description
|
| 4/1/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
SC |
ESS |
Richland County. An iVotronic e-voting machine was set up incorrectly in Ward 17, allowing voters to vote for candidates that were not supposed to be on their ballots. About 95 people voted before the problem was noticed and the machine was replaced.
Story
Archive |
| 3/24/2008 |
Ballot printing |
CA |
ESS |
Sacramento County. ES&S miscalibrated the precinct optical scanners, and the tinting on the ballots was so dark that the scanners mis-read the votes. Ballots had to be taken back to the central office to be scanned.
"During its investigation, the county said that the vendor that supplies and maintains the scanners, Elections Systems & Software, conducted improper recalibration and preventive maintenance on the machines in December. In addition, the report said that ballots printed by Consolidated Printers were too dark to allow the ballot to be correctly read by the faulty scanners."
Story
Archive |
| 3/24/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
CA |
ESS |
Sacramento County. ES&S miscalibrated the precinct optical scanners, and the tinting on the ballots was so dark that the scanners mis-read the votes. Ballots had to be taken back to the central office to be scanned.
"During its investigation, the county said that the vendor that supplies and maintains the scanners, Elections Systems & Software, conducted improper recalibration and preventive maintenance on the machines in December. In addition, the report said that ballots printed by Consolidated Printers were too dark to allow the ballot to be correctly read by the faulty scanners."
Story
Archive |
| 3/21/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
NM |
ESS |
New Mexico. Problem-prone memory cards used in voting machines across New Mexico are being recalled to make certain they're working properly in preparation for the June primary election. The cards hold ballot information and are necessary for vote tabulators to operate. A number of county clerks have reported card failures and they have been forced to use backup cards to keep voting machines in service during elections.
Story
Archive |
| 3/16/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
OH |
ESS |
Franklin County. In the November 2007 election, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Bruner discovered a voting machine problem when she voted.
When she voted on Nov. 6, Brunner said she was surprised to see a gray bar and the words "candidate withdrawn" where Democrat Jay Perez's name ought to have been. Her husband, voting on a nearby machine, told her, "Perez was on my ballot."
"This is a huge problem," Brunner said. "There is great concern that not every voter has the same ballot."
She launched a criminal investigation, which has already discovered that not all the machines were tested before the election and a function that tracks changes in the machines was purposely turned off.
Story
Archive |
| 3/5/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
TX |
ESS |
Angelina County. Central tabulators couldn't read the vote-data cards from the M100 optical scanners. The precinct numbers labeled on the cards did not match the information inside the card, and the machines would not accept them. Acting Tax Assessor Thelma "Midget" Sherman conceded that there was a programming error down the line that could have been caught earlier.
Story
Archive
Story2
Archive2 |
| 2/21/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
FL |
ESS |
Broward County. Precinct D001 shows 79 more ballots on the iVotronics than the number of registered voters -- 1011 ballots, 932 voters registered in the precinct. "Overcounts" in smaller numbers appeared in other precincts, too.
Story
Archive |
| 2/19/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
WI |
ESS |
Milwaukee. Optech Eagle optical scanners jammed and rejected ballots at several precincts.
Story
Archive |
| 2/12/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
CA |
ESS |
Los Angeles County. Poll worker/journalist reports that they couldn't get the InkaVote machines working for the first few hours, and the multilingual machine never worked at all.
Story
Archive |
| 2/10/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
AR |
ESS |
According the the Secretary of State's office, there were fewer problems than in previous elections. However, there were some printer malfunctions, some machines wouldn't start up, a power outage caused machines to shut down, one machine wasn't printing paper records properly.
Story
Archive |
| 2/7/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
AZ |
ESS |
Cochise County. As the county accumulated totals from the precincts, a computer error on kept adding the results for five polling places every time new figures were added. The error got worse when the cumulative error went through five updates. County officials noticed the problem when they realized the total number of ballots cast was reported to be more than the people registered in the county.
Story
Archive |
| 2/7/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
IL |
ESS |
Lake County. An as-yet unidentified machine malfunction prevented M100 optical scan vote-tabulation machines at polling places across the county Tuesday night from connecting to the county's computers in Waukegan through the phone lines. (An independent consultant has been employed to investigate.) The county clerk's office successfully relied on a backup plan - driving the machines to the nearest transfer station - to get votes from 161 polling places to the county government center.
Story
Archive |
| 2/7/2008 |
Registration errors |
NM |
ESS |
High percentages of voters were forced to vote on provisional ballots due to severe flaws in the voter registration database used by the Democratic party (which ran the primary). 50% of the ballots were provisional in Mora County. At least 15% in San Miguel County. Questions remain about where the Democratic party got the voter lists, since it didn't get them from the county clerks.
Story
Archive
"With 183 of 184 of precincts reporting, Hillary Rodham Clinton held a lead of 1,092 votes — 67,921 votes compared to 66,829 for Barack Obama, according to preliminary results posted on the state Democratic Party's Web site." 17,000 provisional ballots remain to be counted.
Story2
Archive2 |
| 2/6/2008 |
Canvass anomalies |
AL |
ESS |
Lauderdale County. An error in vote tabulations at the Underwood-Petersville precincts -- the optical scan machines at that precinct showed that seven more ballots were cast than was supported by documentation.
Story
Archive |
| 2/6/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
AR |
ESS |
Benton County. iVotronic e-voting machines failed to start up at several polling places. Voters used paper ballots. Many were working by 2 pm. At one precinct, the screen was still black.
Story
Archive
The county also had problems closing the machines at the end of day to extract results. And "Poor-quality paper rolls
and humidity caused machines to jam."
Story
Archive |
| 2/6/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
AR |
ESS |
Faulkner County. iVotronic e-voting machine printer fails. Conway's Lisa Burks had just cast her vote using the touch-screen machine, but when she reviewed the printout she saw "a short horizontal line and long vertical line. The machine, Burks said, picked the wrong voter to mess with. As the founder and former national coordinator of the National Coalition for Verified Voting, Burks said, she lobbied against the state's adoption of electronic voting machines."
Other troubles include a machine that would not start up.
Story
Archive |
| 2/5/2008 |
Malfeasance |
CA |
ESS |
Los Angeles. The electoral inspector at the Westside Jewish Community Center says he still has not received voting equipment, hours after polls opened. Bernie Cade says he has not received voting machines or the ink that goes in them for any of the seven booths in the polling station. Dozens of people were sent to other polling places nearby. Los Angeles County Registrar's office spokeswoman Grace Chavez says someone with the equipment should be on their way soon.
Story
Archive |
| 2/5/2008 |
Poor design |
CA |
ESS |
Los Angeles. The Los Angeles system requires that decline-to-state voters not only ask specifically for a Democratic ballot - but also fill in a special bubble on the ballot indicating their desire to vote on the Democratic presidential ticket. Failure to fill in the bubble voids their presidential ballot. There are 776,000 "decline-to-state" voters in LA.
Story
Archive
Story2
Archive2
Election officials are concerned that "double bubble" ballot design flaw could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.
Story
Archive
|
| 1/30/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
FL |
ESS |
Benton County. iVotronic touch screen machines failed to start properly in all three early voting locations on Tuesday. "(Each machine ) just didn't want to open right. (It was ) a glitch in the program," for the electronic voting machines, Brown said.
Story
Archive |
| 1/30/2008 |
Too few machines |
FL |
ESS |
Broward County. Unidentified problems with electronic voter check-in devices, confusion over how to use them, and too few of them in the polling places caused long lines and complaints from voters. Some voters gave up and left.
Story
Archive |
| 1/29/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
FL |
ESS |
Miami Dade and Broward Counties. iVotronic touch screen machines. Presidential candidates did not appear on the ballots of some voters, both Democrats and Republicans.
Story
Archive |
| 1/24/2008 |
Paper ballots (late) |
IL |
ESS |
At least six counties - Kendall, Hancock, JoDaviess, LaSalle, Wabash and Woodford - have had significant delays in receiving their ballots for the election that is less than two weeks away. Some received their ballots this week, while a couple are still waiting. ES&S spokeswoman Amanda Brown said the company has no specific reason why some counties got their ballots late.
Story
Archive
This is one more in a long list of ES&S failures to deliver on its contractual obligations. |
| 1/23/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
CA |
ESS |
Sacramento County. M100 optical scanners malfunctioned in many ways during the pre-election "logic and accuracy" tests.
"With some machines, the ballot could not be loaded at all, or only accepted if loaded in backwards. In some cases, Democratic votes were not being recorded by a scanner. With other machines, it would be Republican votes that were not recorded. And with some machines, there were no problems at all. With the election within two weeks, [County Registrar of Voters Jill] Lavine decided to forego using the scanners altogether, and count the ballots centrally at the county election office. "
Story
|
| 1/22/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
SC |
ESS |
Florence County. As in Horry County, the iVotronic touch screen machines were set to close on the wrong date and would not report the results until they were reprogrammed for the correct date.
Story
Archive |
| 1/20/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
SC |
ESS |
Horry County. iVotronics touch screen machines refused to print results at the end of the day. "The machines' pre-programmed poll-closing time was incorrect, and technicians had to follow a multi-step procedure to manually shut them off before counting could begin. The closing date for the machines was set for Jan. 26, the date of the Democratic primary, instead of Saturday night."
Story
Archive |
| 1/19/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
SC |
ESS |
Horry County. iVotronic touch screen machines. "Poll workers in Horry County tell CNN voting machines have been down since polls opened Saturday morning throughout the county — the machines are not reading an activation card." All 100 precincts in the county have been affected. Some voters have been turned away when paper ballots ran out.
Story
Archive
Story2
Archive2
Story3
|
| 1/14/2008 |
Poor design |
FL |
ESS |
Broward County. Poll workers called up the wrong electronic ballot (on the ES&S iVotronic machines) for some Hollywood and Cooper City voters.
Story
Archive |
| 12/3/2007 |
Canvass anomalies |
SC |
ESS |
Florence County. 108 blank ballots were recorded by ES&S iVotronic machines in last month's one-contest election. Florence County Elections Director Mike Young wants to find out what caused that phenomenon.
“I’d like to know why 108 people would go into a polling place and go through all the trouble of signing in, showing their identification, and going into the voting booth and casting a blank ballot,” Young said.
Story
Archive
Note: High "undervotes" on iVotronics are common, and in some elections, lost votes and inaccurate tallies were proven to be caused by machine malfunction. For example, Raleigh, NC, 2002, and LaPorte Co, IN, 2004, and Waldenberg, AR, 2006.
|
| 11/12/2007 |
Machine malfunction |
TX |
ESS |
Wharton County. The voting machine, not voter error, not a calibration problem, switched votes.
When Jim Welch voted last Tuesday, he watched as the voting machine changed the vote he'd entered a few moments earlier. "What Welch witnessed was votes that registered CORRECTLY when he touched the screen, switching later to a different vote choice, when he was almost finished voting the full page.
"Welch was stunned to see a correctly marked vote take on a life of its own, hopping over to a different spot while he voted on other items. He called an elections worker over to show him the problem. The elections worker helped him re-vote the ballot, and both men watched as the vote registered correctly, but later spontaneously altered to shift to another ballot choice."
Story
|
| 11/8/2007 |
Poor design |
IA |
ESS |
Johnson County. An error in the tally procedure flipped the results on an ordinance that would keep children out of bars after 10pm. Because the error caused a last-minute surge in "no" votes, the error was caught and corrected.
Story
Archive |
| 11/8/2007 |
Machine malfunction |
OH |
ESS |
Lawrence County. A ballot programming error, by ES&S, on the M100 tabulator caused the votes for Hamilton Township trustee to be reversed.
Story
Archive |
| 11/8/2007 |
Poor design |
OH |
ESS |
Seneca County. ES&S M100 optical scanners could not be programmed to handle both the general election and primary election occuring at the same time. Only the general election ballots could be scanned at the polling place. The primary election ballots had to be taken back to the central office and fed into the machine one by one.
Story
Archive |
| 11/7/2007 |
Poor design |
IN |
ESS |
Marion County. Memory cards -- small electronic ballot boxes -- went missing. The bipartisan board is looking for them.
Story
Archive |
| 11/7/2007 |
Machine malfunction |
OH |
ESS |
Putnam County. iVotronic electronic voting machines. Flash card problems caused delays. According to the director of the Board of Elections, every precinct had problems with at least one machine.
Story
Archive
Story2
Archive2 |
| 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
|
| 11/6/2007 |
Machine malfunction |
OH |
ESS |
Ashtabula County. Ballot programming error on the ES&S M100 prevented the tabulator machines assigned to those multiple-candidate races from accepting more than one name on the ballot. The ballots were counted by hand.
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
|
| 5/16/2007 |
Late counting |
PA |
ESS |
Beaver County. Complicated procedures with three activator devices. Poll worker didn't close the polls and votes from the iVotronics weren't included in the initial results.
Story
Archive |
| 5/16/2007 |
Machine malfunction |
PA |
ESS |
Luzerne County. Wrong ballots on the iVotronic.
The candidates in Region 2 appeared on the Region 3 ballot and the candidates in Region 3 appeared on the Region 2 ballot, according to Leonard Piazza, director of the Luzerne County Bureau of Elections. “Due to an oversight we had the wrong ballots on those machines,” Piazza said.
Story
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