| Date |
Problem Type |
State
|
Vendor
|
Description
|
| 11/4/2008 |
E-pollbook |
MD |
|
Prince George County. At Takoma Park Middle School, where the electronic poll book broke down at 8 a.m., the precinct’s chief Democratic election judge Marlon Sellow tried repeatedly to get a replacement from the Montgomery County Board of Elections. To calm the concerns of the voters, whose patience he praised, Sellow said he told them the precinct was not provided enough electronic poll books to accommodate the large turnout. This incomplete truth — after all, the problem was not quantity but quality — helped to maintain the voters’ faith in the system, Sellow said.
Story
Archive |
| 11/4/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
Prince George County. Voters had to wait up to four hours when only two of the six touch screen voting machines were in operation at Towers of Westchester Park Building in College Park.
Story
Archive |
| 11/4/2008 |
Too few machines |
MD |
Diebold |
Prince George County. Four hours was the waiting time at the Rollingcrest-Chillum Community Center in Hyattsville, as two machines were not enough to accommodate the massive turn out of seniors in that neighborhood. Too few machines at Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville also contributed to a four-hour wait.
Story
Archive |
| 2/12/2008 |
E-pollbook |
MD |
Diebold |
Anne Arundel County. Unidentified polling book snafus caused delays at the start of the election day.
Story
Archive |
| 2/12/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
Prince George County. Only three out of six machines were operating at one polling place. Another was late opening because the Election Judge didn't have the code needed to start the e-voting machines.
Story
Archive |
| 2/12/2008 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
Anne Arundel County. Three voting machines shut down. Two started back up when the election judge unplugged them and plugged them back in. One remained down. "The Diebold tech doesn't know anything," she said in frustration. "Teens from Broadneck High did a better job figuring things out last time."
Story
Archive |
| 2/12/2008 |
Provisional ballots |
MD |
|
Across the state, polls stayed open 1.5 hours late because voters were struggling with the winter weather. However, the ballots cast after 8:00 will be provisional ballots, and will not be counted until next Tuesday.
Story
Archive |
| 11/6/2007 |
Registration errors |
MD |
|
Montgomery County. "Thousands of voters in Rockville, who are choosing a new mayor and four City Council members today, were mistakenly identified as having already voted by absentee ballot when they arrived this morning at polling places throughout the city. The error, which raised concerns among candidates about double-voting, occurred after the State Board of Elections sent Rockville officials the wrong copy of a voter database."
Story
Story2
Archive2
Another article tells more about the registration database bug: "The state's list inadvertently marked as absentee the names of voters with a home address that begins with the number 5."
Story
Archive
|
| 11/7/2006 |
Deceptive practices |
MD |
|
Prince George County. Inaccurate sample ballots describing Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Senate candidate Michael S. Steele as Democrats were handed out to voters in at least four polling sites in Prince George's County election day morning .
Story
|
| 11/7/2006 |
E-pollbook |
MD |
Diebold |
Baltimore. Some Diebold electronic "voter check-in books" are not operating properly.
Story
Archive |
| 11/7/2006 |
Machine malfunctions |
MD |
Diebold |
Problems abound in Maryland.
Story |
| 11/7/2006 |
Poor design |
MD |
Diebold |
Annapolis. Election judges accidentally turned off the Diebold machines by using the wrong key card. Technicians were called in to fix the problem.
Story
Archive |
| 10/26/2006 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
It is now revealed that Diebold replaced 4,700 system boards in Maryland's touch screen machines in 2005 to eliminate the "screen freezes" that have occurred since the machines were purchased in 2002. "The screen freezes do not cause votes to be lost, officials said." Both Diebold and Linda Lamone kept this information from the state board of elections.
Story
Archive |
| 10/20/2006 |
Paper ballots (late) |
MD |
Diebold |
Local officials in four major Maryland jurisdictions say ballots, printed by Diebold, are unusually late. "Voters are requesting absentee ballots in large numbers this year because of glitches that have plagued the new electronic voting machines built by Diebold Elections Systems Inc." Local officials say the ballots normally arrive 30 days before the election. State board of elections agrees with Diebold, who says the ballots aren't late.
Story
Archive
October 26. Ballots are "trickling in" from Diebold. Some jurisdictions have half what they need. Some only have 20%. "It's really terrible," said Robert J. Antonetti Sr., elections administrator in Prince George's County. "Time is running out. It's going to deny people the right to vote."
Story
Archive |
| 3/8/2005 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
All Maryland voting machines have been on ''lockdown'' since November 2, 2004 due to statewide machine failures including 12% of machines in Montgomery County, some of which appear to have lost votes in significant numbers.
According to the IT Report to the Montgomery County Election Board, dated December 13, 2004, screen freezes, which occurred on 106 voting units were "the most serious of errors" because many "froze when the voter pressed the Cast Ballot button." As a result "election judges are unable to provide substantial confirmation that the vote was in fact counted."
Story
Archive |
| 11/23/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
TrueVoteMD's trained election observers 201 machine malfunction in the 108 precincts they observed, which represent 6% of the state's precincts. Among the problems were 42 instances of machine crashes, 30 screen malfunctions, 17 instances when votes were switched on the screen, 37 problems with the ballot encoder, and 16 incidents in which the ballot was incorrect or incomplete.
Story
Archive |
| 11/4/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
|
Data transmission failures occurred in 14 precincts. Story
|
| 11/3/2004 |
Ballot secrecy |
MD |
Diebold |
One complaint heard across Maryland was that voters were a little uncomfortable with a lack of privacy, which allowed others to see how they cast their votes.
Story
Archive
|
| 11/3/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
Poll watchers report vote counts that did not match the check-in numbers.
Story
Archive |
| 11/3/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
Nine voting machines ran out of battery power and nearly 40 votes may have been lost in Palm Beach County. The nine machines at a Boynton Beach precinct weren't plugged in properly, and their batteries wore down around 9:30 a.m.
Story
Archive |
| 11/3/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
The software running on the touch-screen machines used across the state failed to record some votes correctly, jumped to other pages on the ballot without being prompted by the voter and inadvertently omitted some political races, according to TrueVoteMD. "We have received hundreds of calls from across the state," said the group?s co-director.
Story
Archive |
| 11/3/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
A woman in Baltimore County pushed her selection for president and senator repeatedly, but couldn?t get the machine to register her choice properly. A man in Montgomery County said the machine skipped right past the presidential and senate races. A woman in Montgomery County tried to make her selection for the county school board, but the machine advanced to the next screen after she had chosen only half of the candidates.
Story
Archive
|
| 11/3/2004 |
Provisional ballots |
MD |
Diebold |
Some people had trouble getting provisional ballots, including a soldier who had recently returned from Iraq, until state elections officials intervened.
Story
Archive |
| 11/3/2004 |
Registration fraud |
MD |
Diebold |
Hundreds of student voters at the University of Maryland, College Park, were turned away because they had been improperly registered by a campus organization.
Story
Archive |
| 11/2/2004 |
Machine malfunction |
MD |
Diebold |
Essex County. Problems around the area range from missing keys to inoperable machines to a lack of extension cords.
Story |
| 11/2/2004 |
Malfeasance |
MD |
|
Essex County. An election judge left a polling place at Sandalwood Elementary School in Essex, saying he forgot something at home. When he returned, he was fired over the phone. Voters who had to wait were allowed to vote by provisional ballot.
Story
|
| 10/26/2004 |
Ballot secrecy |
MD |
|
Absentee ballots have an identifier on the outside envelope, indicating the party of the voter. Election watchers say the party tags invite fraud because a ballot handler who disagrees with a voter's party choice could simply throw out his or her ballot. Maryland State Board of Elections officials maintain there is no cause for concern, but they have also said they might discontinue the practice in future elections. Story Archive
|
