Florida 'Missing' 18,000 E-Votes in Close Race

CptSternn · 11-11-2006, 01:04 AM

http://news.**********/s/pcworld/127838

Government watchdog group Common Cause has called for an investigation of electronic voting machines used in Florida's 13th congressional district because of 18,000 missing votes.

About 18,000 people who cast votes in other races in Tuesday's election failed to record a vote for either candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. At last count, Republican candidate Vern Buchanan led Democratic candidate Christine Jennings by less than 400 votes in the race to succeed Republican Katherine Harris, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate.

Nearly 13 percent of voters in Sarasota County picked candidates in other races but did not choose a candidate in the House race. More than 35 callers to Common Cause's voter hotline left messages Tuesday saying the e-voting machines appeared to leave off a vote for Jennings on their summary screens, said Ben Wilcox, executive director of Common Cause Florida. In neighboring Manatee County, just 2 percent of voters did not cast a ballot in the congressional race.
Call For Revote

Some voters caught the omission and were able to go back and vote again for Jennings, but others may have missed the problem, Wilcox said.

"Sarasota County election officials must conduct a revote," Wilcox said. "The machines should be impounded, audited and tested to determine if voters were unable to cast a ballot and why. Sarasota County voters deserve an explanation."

Undervoting for top-of-the-ballot races on e-voting machines is typically under 1 percent, according to a study released this year by the Brennan Center for Justice.
No Receipts

The county did not require the Elections System and Software (ES&S) e-voting machines to include paper printouts.

"This is part of the reason we've been calling for a paper trail," Wilcox said.

Ironically, Sarasota County voters on Tuesday approved a ballot measure requiring paper trail ballots to be used as a backup to the e-voting machines.

Sarasota County voters cast about 16,000 more votes in the Florida governor's race and in the Senate race than were recorded in the House race. About 4,000 more people cast ballots for the county's Southern District Hospital Board than were recorded in the House race.
Paper Vs. Computer

One of the major advantages of using e-voting machines is they are supposed to make it for difficult for voters to undervote, e-voting advocates have long said.

Sarasota County will begin a recount in the race Monday. County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent didn't immediately return a phone call seeking comment on the undervote. An ES&S spokesman also didn't not immediately return a phone call.

So the first of the 'voting irregularities' begin to surface. Was it a glitch? Was it tampering? Guess we will have to wait and see.

Born Again · 11-11-2006, 01:10 AM

I knew something like this would spawn out from somewhere. Why does everything have to be so goddamn difficult?

Crying_Crimson_Tears · 11-11-2006, 07:39 AM

I knew it would be Florida who would have issues. They seem to have the most issues with voting and such.

TSW|Abaddon · 11-11-2006, 10:33 AM

Who cares if the Dems won, really....

Crying_Crimson_Tears · 11-11-2006, 10:44 AM

I like the dems. I'm really glad they won. They needed to in order to get the House and the Senate under control again. We needed a change.

Draconysius · 11-11-2006, 10:58 AM

Eh, no shit. Democracy is one hell of a deceptive, fucktup system. The average American citizen doesn't exactly improve the situation, either.
Even if all the corrupt asshats in congress were to go away somehow, there'd still be some simple citizens wishing to replace those very positions and enslave us all again! Humans are jus evil.

NME · 11-11-2006, 08:43 PM

First off, why is it always Florida?

Secondly, while I'm glad the Dems won, as far as I'm concerned, they're merely the lesser of two evils. If a person chooses one evil over another evil, they still get evil.

TSW|Abaddon · 11-11-2006, 11:43 PM

Because old people don't know how to vote? There I said it!

NME · 11-12-2006, 12:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TSW|Abaddon

Because old people don't know how to vote? There I said it!

Yeah, I think Jerry Seinfeld said something about that...

CptSternn · 11-17-2006, 02:19 AM

http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-613...-0-5&subj=news

E-voting glitch turns up in Texas

As elections officials continue their post-mortems on last Tuesday's race, another irregularity in electronic voting machine tallies has surfaced.

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 (registration required) 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.

*snip*

This time, the 'error' didn't effect the outcome due to the large number of people who voted for the winner. However, had it been a close race, the extra 10,000 votes would have definately caused an issue.

I mean, the tightest race was the VA race, and that came down to a couple thousand votes.

Is it just me or is it odd that the glitches always favour the republican party?

There has yet to be one time where a 'computer glitch', a voter kicked off a voting list by 'computer error', or any other type if voting abnormality that has effected the republicans. It's always something that happens to democratic supporters.