December 9, 2006 - How Well Did e-Voting Work This Time?

So how well did electonic voting work this time?  As we should all have expected - the results were mixed.

The 2006 elections weren't the first to include electronic voting machines in some sectors.  e-voting was a part of the 2004 Presidential elections as well, although on a smaller scale.

In the days after the Nov. 2 [2004] presidential election, we were treated to headlines such as "E-voting passed the test" on Techweb.com and "Success claimed for US e-voting machines" on newscientist.com. It is hard to find a single piece of official material that details exactly what test e-voting passed. Since there were no catastrophic failures or meltdowns, many people assume, naively, that e-voting works.

 

Calling e-voting a success is akin to a pharmaceutical company claiming a **** is safe in advance of FDA approval. Even after testing and approval, complex ****s such as Vioxx have effects that are often not seen for a long while. It's undeniable that e-voting "operated," but it is premature to call it a "success"...

How Do We Know if E-Voting Is a Success or Failure?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1744058,00.asp

But in 2006, e-voting was much more widespread, and with it, reports of problems - software problems, hardware problems, training problems and, of course, people problems.

Even with more than $4 Billion spent on new machinery, tens of thousands of voters encountered serious problems at the polls.  The result in some places was significant confusion, long lines, the possibilities of incorrect counts, and perhaps most importantly - a growing mistrust of the country's voting systems.

To me, this isn't surprising.  I've worked on projects that had similar warning flags:

• Indequately trained people trying to operate a new system
• Inadequate leadership
• No standards
• Very new technology, in a traditionally lower-tech environment
• Inadequate alternative procedures
• Intense scrutiny from officials ready to place blame
• Development and testing time cut
• Unmoveable deadlines

I guess the part that surprised me is that it wasn't a total catastrophe.

It will be interesting to see what happens for the next elections.  There are already talks of new legislation requiring paper backup for all e-voting systems.

Here are some interesting news clips.

One of the great hazards of the way electronic voting has been introduced in the United States is that it could end up undermining democracy by producing unreliable election results that cannot be truly audited or corrected. This month, that nightmare became a reality. Voting machines in a Congressional race in Florida — where else? — may have swallowed about 18,000 votes, far more than the nominal winner’s razor-thin margin of victory. Because those votes were in the loser’s strongest county, if there was a computer glitch it probably changed the outcome of the race.

 

Déjà Vu IN FLORIDA
http://www.amhersttimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3454&Itemid=27

County election officials suspect a software update from Sequoia came with a fault that doubled the count of about 150 ballots cast on a single Barnegat machine, then added 75 votes from that unit to a vote tally in a Lakewood district.

 

County works to end mystery of double vote
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061116/NEWS/611160426/1070/NEWS02

The recount is over in the 13th Congressional District in Florida. The lawyers have won -- and the Democrat has lost. As in the presidential election of 2000, that loss appears to have been caused by a glitch in the voting process. But this time, the controversy centers on the very electronic voting machines many counties around the country purchased after the 2000 election in hopes of avoiding the sort of debacle that produced Bush v. Gore.

...

Computer scientists and voting experts speculate that the roots of the problem could have been both with the ballot design and with the machines themselves malfunctioning. The race appeared at the top of a cluttered page dominated by the governor's race, which could have caused some voters to simply overlook the race. Yet the computer software or hardware also could have lost some votes cast, either by the software simply dropping a vote between the voter casting it on the touch screen, or the hardware of the screen registering two touches, a vote and then a touch canceling that vote. The double-touch problem is known as "screen bounce." But there's no way to reliably reconstruct what likely happened without actually examining the equipment. Both Jennings' lawyers and the lawyers for the watchdog groups are seeking to have their own computer experts examine the machines as part of discovery in their legal cases.

 

Did voting machines steal a Democratic victory?
In Katherine Harris' old Florida district, more than 18,000 votes went missing -- and a Republican won a House seat by 369 votes.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/11/22/florida_13/

In Williamson County, Texas, located just north of Austin, elections officials are blaming a software glitch in the region's touch-screen machines for counting each electronically-cast vote not just once, but three times, the Austin American-Statesman reported in its Wednesday edition.

 

County officials uncovered the hiccups on the day after the election, when they found that the number of reported votes was higher than the number of people who signed at their polling places.

 

As a result of the glitch, the total count for votes cast was about 91,000, when it should have been closer to 84,500. (Most of the county's votes were actually cast on paper ballots, according to the report.) Elections officials said the discrepancy wouldn't affect the outcome of any races because the triple-counting did not skew the percentages of votes cast for each candidate.

E-voting glitch turns up in Texas
http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6136123.html

Any changes in the state's voting system must be approved by the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees elections nationwide, Clingman said.

 

Reforms proposed by the commission that are set to go into effect in January will to give the agency more power to regulate elections and develop standards for voting software and hardware.

 

Voter rights advocates say the changes could strengthen the American electoral process and its patchwork of voting methods and inconsistent rules that has spawned numerous glitch-filled elections.

 

The agency is scheduled to vote next month on whether to forbid voting equipment manufacturers from selling hardware and software that is proved or suspected to fail.

It would be the first time the federal government had the power to punish companies that sold bad equipment.

Upgrades Sought In State Election System For 2008 Presidential Race
http://www.kotv.com/news/local/story/?id=115104

Many Pennsylvanians were frustrated by the electronic voting machines that greeted them Tuesday, but no one matched the reaction of Michael Young.
 
The 43-year-old Allentown man left a machine in small pieces after he attacked it with a paperweight. He faces charges of felony criminal mischief and tampering with voting machines, although authorities said his motive wasn't clear.

 

Voters in Westmoreland County can certainly sympathize with Young's response. A software glitch left many standing in long lines or turned away from polling places.

 

A problem with voting cartridges that contained the ballots is being blamed for Tuesday's fiasco, which affected more than 800 machines. An incorrect time stamp caused the machines to react as if it weren't really Election Day.

Rage against the machines
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_479013.html

Problems with long lines at polling places were reported around Monterey County on Tuesday, and officials blame it on a long ballot and technical problems with touch screen voting machines.

 

Some voters reported waiting in line for more than an hour to cast their ballot.

Officials said part of the problem was that some electronic voting machines were running out of paper and had to be shut down, but the glitch happened late in the day just as people getting off of work were heading to the polls.
 
As a result, many people had to vote by paper ballot.

 

Another issue arose with early returns.

 

The elections office was reporting that all precinct ballots had been reported and counted, which was not true. That glitch is being blamed on computer software.

 

Technical Glitches Blamed For Election Day Problems
More Than 22,000 Votes Yet To Be Counted
http://www.theksbwchannel.com/news/10277172/detail.html

Mayor William Wood and challenger Ronnie Chatman both got 18 votes. A third challenger, Randy Wooten, didn’t get any votes, not even his own.

 

And therein lies a tale.

 

The little town of Waldenburg, you see, had gone high-tech on Election Day and used electronic voting for its 80 citizens. Perhaps we wouldn’t normally care about the results of such a minor election, but Wooten would.
 
In this case, he isn’t necessarily concerned about losing, but he is concerned about why he did not get any votes at all. He insists he voted for himself, and his wife says she loyally cast her vote for Wooten, too.

 

Makes sense, but their votes didn’t show up when the results on the touch-screen voting machine were tabulated that night with software supplied by Election Systems and Software.

 

According to ES&S, it was an 18-18 tie with no votes for Wooten

 

So we either believe ES&S or we believe the Wootens.

 

Vote no to paperless ballots
You probably didn’t think you had a stake in the election for mayor that took place this month in Waldenburg, Ark., but you did.
http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2006/11/20/opinion/opinion01.txt

A minor glitch at one polling place in Minneapolis today -- after someone spilled coffee on a voting machine.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer says coffee was spilled on the optical scanner of a voting machine at First Christian Church. That caused the machine to short out.

Kiffmeyer says the spill did not hinder counting of votes. But election officials were told to stop serving coffee to voters.

Otherwise, she says, it's been pretty uneventful in Minnesota.

Coffee spilled on voting machine, otherwise voting is smooth
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/state/minnesota/15951974.htm

When Hawkins County poll workers arrived at all 22 precincts Tuesday morning around 7 a.m., they were unable to get the county's new computerized voting machines to work.

Fleenor explained that before the polls could open, workers had to run a "zero tape" through each machine to show there were no votes on it from past elections before voting could begin.

 

Apparently the worker who was supposed to reset the voting machines after early voting didn't do it right, Fleenor said. Precincts immediately began calling election headquarters in Rogersville to report the problem.

Voting machine glitch forces return to paper ballots in Hawkins
http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=3696351