Florida Primary Recount Reveals Grave Voting Problems One Month Before Presidential Election

[sinkingfeeling]

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/florida-countys.html

A month of primary recounts in the election battleground of Palm Beach County, Florida, has twice flipped the winner in a local judicial race and revealed grave problems in the county's election infrastructure, including thousands of misplaced ballots and vote tabulation machines that are literally unable to produce the same results twice.

Experts say the brew of administrative bungling and mysterious technological failures raises new and troubling questions about the county that played a crucial role in the 2000 presidential election debacle, and is one of a handful of counties considered pivotal in the upcoming presidential election. Voting advocates are fearful that problems here -- and perhaps in other election hot spots -- could trigger a replay of the disputed 2000 election.

A hunt for the ballots ensued, and was so successful that officials found an additional 227 ballots that were never counted on election day. All of the ballots were discovered in boxes in the county's tabulation center. Officials blamed the overlooked ballots on the disorderly way in which the recount was conducted, and the high number of ballots cast in the election.

On that last point, it's worth noting that about 100,000 primary ballots were cast in the county. The county is expecting more than half-a-million ballots to be cast Nov. 4. The ballot in November will also be two pages long, as opposed to the one-page ballot used in the primary, increasing concerns that the county could become ground zero for an election meltdown in the presidential race.

Officials expected the machines would reject the same ballots again. But that didn't happen. During a first test of 160 ballots, the machines accepted three of them. In a second test of 102 ballots, the machines accepted 13 of them, and rejected the others. When the same ballots were run through the machines again, 90 of the ballots were accepted. (All of these numbers come from the Sun-Sentinel story about the test. Election officials could not be reached to confirm the numbers.)

"We just sat there with our heads spinning," Richman said. "It was unbelievable. Nobody has been able to explain it."

[Lorien]

1. it's not a tech failure

it's a corrupt machine. My friggin iPhone has GPS, Pandora, Air sharing, an iPod, YouTube, a level and ruler, a pedometer, film trailers and reviews, games, the U.S. Constitution, my calendar, a voice recorder, several complete non fiction titles, stock market updates, a camera, FlyCast radio and even an interactive koi pond on it....and all of them WORK right there in the palm of my hand. Consistently. You can't tell any of us that you can't come up with a machine that accurately COUNTS DOTS from a sheet of paper! Somebody doesn't want a free and fair election...again.

[AndyA]

2. Palm Beach County, Florida...again. (SIGH)

What the hell? :wtf:

[bemildred]

3. Electronic voting machines are a stupid idea, always were.

If one must go to electronic voting, you need to do it on the web with secure voter IDs and instant results. But paper is cheaper and better. Not every problem must be solved with a computer.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. But this is about the tabulators. Florida made the counties ditch the electronic voting machines.

[bemildred]

5. Yeah, yeah, I tend to get riled up about misuse of computers.

This sounds like the 2000 debacle. Personally, I think elections are important enough public business to hire enough labor to do the count and audit the result, and to pay them well for doing it. How much would it cost compared to all the damage done these last 8 years? Part of the problem is, has been, that nobody really gives a shit, the integrity of our political system is taken for granted, when all of history says that that is a foolish attitude.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Elections and electrons don't mix.