Docs Point to E-Voting Bug in Contested Race

[Melissa G]

Docs Point to E-Voting Bug in Contested Race
By Kim Zetter, Wired News
April 17, 2007
This article was posted at Wired.com and is reposted here with permission of the author.



Symptoms consistent with a known software flaw in a popular electronic voting machine surfaced widely in a controversial election in Sarasota County, Florida, last November, despite county officials' claims that a bug played no role in the election results, according to documents obtained by Wired News.



Activists say the flaw might have contributed to the high number of lost or uncast votes in a now-contested congressional race.



Incident reports from the election reveal Sarasota County poll workers from at least 19 precincts contacted technicians and election officials to report touch-screen sensitivity problems with the I-Votronic voting machine. In those incidents, voters were forced to press the screen harder and repeatedly to register a vote. The complaints mirror the symptoms of a bug that the machine's maker, Election Systems & Software, revealed prior to the election in a warning unheeded by the county.



Additionally, the documents -- obtained through public records requests by Wired News and the Florida Coalition for Fair Elections -- show the problems also appeared on a smaller scale during the primary election in Sarasota County two months earlier. This contradicts statements by Sarasota supervisor of elections Kathy Dent, who told Wired News last month that no such problems happened during the primary, and that she only learned voters were having problems with the touch screens after the November election was over and votes were counted.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2392&Itemid=51

[Wilms]

1. K & R n/t

[bleever]

2. This kind of forensic work is slow

and steady.

:)

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. I guess I am glad no one listened to me in Sept 2006

If people had listened to me back in Sept 2006, the machines might have been fixed, and
then Florida might not have had the kind of disaster it takes to get laws changed.

I tried to get people to look at that ES&S memo back in Sept 2006. (I had the memo on my website then).

E-Vote Memo Is a 'Smoking Gun' 03.22.07

The ES&S memo was obtained by a Florida voting activist in August through a Freedom of Information Act request. After that activist posted it to a listserv, Joyce McCloy of the North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting sent the memo to computer scientists and other activists in Florida. McCloy also posted it to her website in September, where it sat unnoticed. The blogosphere noticed the memo only after she discussed it recently in comments posted to a computer scientist's blog.

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/03/EVOTE_0322

Professor Ed Felton (hacked Diebold at Princeton) posted this blog:

Sarasota: Could a Bug Have Lost Votes?
Tuesday February 27, 2007 by Ed Felten

At this point, we still don’t know what caused the high undervote rate in Sarasota’s Congressional election. There are two theories. The State-commissioned study released last week argues that for the theory that a badly designed ballot caused many voters to not see that race and therefore not cast a vote.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1126

I posted the ES&S Smoothing filter memo to his blog, with comments:

February 28th, 2007 at 9:12 am
ES&S sent a “software bug” memo to FLorida SOEs in August of 2006 that there was a problem with a “smoothing filter” that would possibly delay the recording of the voter’s selections. This delay would be longer than expected, and the voter might move on before the vote was recorded.

ES&S recommended putting signs in the voting booths to warn voters, and also recommended a “software patch” prior to the November election.

I do not know if all or any Florida machines ever received that patch, or if the patch was distributed, if it was put on every single voting machine.
Further, if the patch was applied, was it tested? Did it work uniformly on all machines, including those that were ADA enabled?

See that memo here: http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/ESS_Aug_2006_iVotronic_FL_memo.pdf

If ballot style was the sole cause of FL 13 undervote, then we in North Carolina should have had far worse problems in our iVotronic counties.

Here is Sarasota FL 13’s ballot http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/sarasota_ballot_style.pdf

Now take a look at what appears to be a more confusing ballot style
for Mecklenburg County NC, the NC 08 ballot:
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/Mecklenburg_2006_ballot.pdf
(notice the nearly hidden placement of the US congressional race?)
Meckelnburg had a 4 % undervote rate for that contest.

Here is a memo from the NC State Board of Elections explaining the differences in NC iVotronics and the FL iVotronics, as well as a ballot comparison:
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/Sarasota_NC_Ballot_Comparison_06.pdf

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1126#comment-291893

Then Voila, The ES&S Smoothing Filter Memo hits Huffington Post:

Mechanical Glitch Ignored In Now Contested Florida Congressional Race
The Huffington Post | Melinda Henneberger | Posted March 13, 2007

WASHINGTON - Last August, Election Systems & Software sent Florida election officials a letter informing them of a glitch in their electronic voting equipment -- a problem that should be fixed before Election Day in November "to avoid any potential issues at the polls."

Instead, the problem was ignored, said Sam Hirsch, a lawyer for Democratic congressional candidate Christine Jennings, who has petitioned the court and the Congress for a new election in Katherine Harris's old district in Sarasota.

But lawyers for Jennings had not even seen the letter from ES&S until recently; it was not provided to them by election officials as it should have been under discovery motions in the case, Hirsch said. Instead, the legal team came across the document on a North Carolina-based website on election reform....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melinda-henneberger/mechanical-glitch-ignored_b_43331.html