The first reports of irregularities caused by voting machines in Tuesday’s elections are trickling in:
In Franklin County, Ohio, voting machines counted an extra 3,893 votes for Bush. The Columbus Dispatch reports: In one precinct, Bush’s tally was supersized by a computer glitch
A computer error involving one voting-machine cartridge gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct.
Franklin County’s unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry’s 260 votes in Precinct 1B, which votes at New Life Church on Stygler Road. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.
The AP reports that an e-voting machine in North Carolina lost more than 4,500 votes: Computer Loses 4,500 Votes
More than 4,500 votes have been lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Scattered other problems may change results in races around the state.
These appear to be only the tip of the iceberg. According to the AP, Reports of electronic voting trouble top 1,000
there were also several dozen voters in six states — particularly Democrats in Florida — who said the wrong candidates appeared on their touch-screen machine’s checkout screen, the coalition said
Expect more irregularities and inconsistencies to surface after BlackBoxVoting.org receives the results of its FOIA request: Voting without auditing. (Are we insane?)
Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing a three-hour deletion on election night; “trouble slips” revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists.
(On an unrelated programming note, the election day hiatus will combine with pre-MPRE preparation and posting here will remain lighter than normal until after the MPRE next week.)
