Fmota News

The scanners are “defective,” finds the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC). One in ten would “miss some votes,” freeze up “inexplicably,” etc. Although ES&S “tried to fix the problems earlier this year… the upgrade actually created more problems.”

“Defective”? Not really. Those scanners have been performing as intended by ES&S—an outfit started up and managed by right-wing Republicans, whose goods are always pooping out, or screwing up, in Democratic areas, like Cuyahoga County. That their goods thus deliver for the party means there’s really nothing wrong with them per se. What’s “defective,” rather, is the US voting system overall—and the vision of all those (the EAC included) who refuse to see what’s happening right before their eyes.

MCM

U.S. government investigation finds Cuyahoga County’s election machines are flawed

Published: Thursday, December 22, 2011, 6:28 PM Updated: Friday, December 23, 2011, 1:29 AM

Laura Johnston, The Plain Dealer By Laura Johnston, The Plain Dealer

ELECTION_SCANNER.JPGPD fileA Cuyahoga County Board of Elections worker, takes a close look in fall 2008 during testing of voting machines in the board’s warehouse. The board began the third of four phases in its testing process, leading to the Nov. 4 presidential election.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Scanners Cuyahoga County has used to tally election results since 2008 are defective, missing some votes, freezing up inexplicably and failing to log problems, according to a federal government agency.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission released its findings** this week, after a 20-month investigation spurred by an April 2010 Plain Dealer story . The paper reported a tenth of the machines arbitrarily powered down and locked up, failing certification tests required by federal law.

The manufacturer, Omaha-Neb.-based Elections Systems & Software Inc. , tried to fix the problems this year, but the upgrade actually created more problems, according to the report. If the company can’t correct the flaw, the government could decertify the machines — leaving Cuyahoga and jurisdictions without the country no way to conduct elections in a presidential year.

Taxpayers spent more than $12 million on the scanners in 2008, to replace a $21 million touch-screen system that crashed twice on the night of the 2007 general election. *The scanners were used in the 2008 presidential election, the 2009 election that ushered in a charter government, the 2010 election that chose new county leaders and countless local elections affecting taxes, city councils and school boards.*

Cuyahoga County elections chief Jane Platten said late Thursday that the scanner-counted results for all elections are accurate. Her staff has created safeguards to work around the problems, including hand-counting certain races to make sure ballots are accurately counted.

“The system works,” Platten said. “There are definitely problems that need to absolutely be fixed. . . We verify so we are confident in that in every single election.”

The Election Assistance Commission was created by the 2002 Help America Vote Act, passed in the aftermath of the controversial 2000 presidential election that put George W. Bush into the White House. The act requires the commission to set standards for election machines and to certify them for use throughout the country.

Cuyahoga County found the problems in two separate tests, in November 2009 and April 2010, Platten said.

In the first test, officials found that when a ballot was placed into the machine *at an angle*, the scanner did not pick up votes in the corner of a 17-inch ballot.

The county now uses only 14-inch ballots to avoid the problem, Platten said.

In the second test, the machines shut down. Now, if scanners freeze during elections, the scanners are tagged and brought into the board of elections, where workers audit the precinct to make sure no voters were lost.

In audits, workers compare the number of voters who signed for ballots, the number of pieces of paper cast, the number of ballots recorded on the scanner’s ticker tape and the number of ballots recorded on the scanner’s memory stick.

The commission began investigating in April 2010, after the Plain Dealer story detailed the freeze problem.

This April, ES&S provided an upgrade meant to correct the problem. The elections commission had certified the fix, but it didn’t work, Platten said.

“We installed it, tested it, found the freeze problem wasn’t fixed and then reverted back to the earlier version,” she said. “We won’t use the version they gave us as the fix.”

A commission engineer watched Cuyahoga’s test and noted that the problems continued. The commission detailed the problems in the report.

ES&S released a statement Thursday in response to the report.

“ES&S continues to appreciate the value and the important role of the EAC certification process. . . As we have stated many times, our mission is to maintain voter confidence and enhance the voting experience. This mission is reflected in our continued participation and substantial financial commitment to the EAC testing program. While we may not necessarily agree with all of the findings or recommendations within the report, we have nonetheless pledged our full cooperation.”

Investigators plan to review policies and practices at ES&S’s headquarters to make sure the company meets commission standards.

ES&S is now working on a new upgrade.

“They have to get it fixed,” Platten said. Between the EAC and ES&S, they need to expedite a fix for this.”

But Platten stressed that the county can conduct elections properly, including the upcoming March primary.

“We have confidence that the ballots are getting counted accurately,” she said. “We test before, during and after every election to make sure that is true.”

10 percent of Cuyahoga County’s voting machines fail pre-election tests

Published: Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 4:00 AM Updated: Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 7:41 AM

Joan Mazzolini, The Plain Dealer By Joan Mazzolini, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — About 10 percent of Cuyahoga County’s voting machines checked so far have failed a pre-election test, once again challenging public confidence in the election system.

With just weeks until the May 4 primary election, the system’s manufacturer, Election Systems & Software Inc. , has been unable to find what is causing the machines to arbitrarily power down and lock up during a test.

The problem showed up about 10 days ago when the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections began a series of routine tests on the voting machines. The machines froze during a specific test done to ensure the optical scanners were reading paper ballots correctly. At different points in that test, the machines simply started powering down, then freezing.

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has 1,200 voting machines. Of the 279 that have been tested, 28 have had this problem.

But it is hard to tell how pervasive the problem is. Board members were told at their meeting Tuesday that some machines that first passed the test, later failed when the procedure was repeated.

Employees stopped the test after 19 of the 279 machines had problems. Those 19 were put aside, and the staff started the tests on the others all over again. By the time they had retested 200 machines, nine of those that initially passed had failed the second time around.

With optical-scan machines, voters fill in ovals next to candidates’ names on a printed paper ballot. The votes are tallied when the ballot is fed into the machine at the polling location.

“A 10 percent failure rates is high,” said board member Inajo Davis Chappell. “We’ve never had this rate of failure. We don’t want the public to have a lack of confidence.”

The problem “is completely unacceptable,” board Chairman Jeff Hastings told an ES&S representative. “I hope the secretary of state knows about this.”

Kyle Weber, ES&S’s project manager for Cuyahoga County, said Tuesday that officials were working hard on trying to find the problem and determine how to fix it before the election.

It isn’t the first time the board has had problems with its election system.

The current board was installed in 2007 after Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner fired the former members because of mismanagement. The new members pledged to restore voter confidence, which was damaged by several events, including a series of problems with the then-new touch screen voting machines .

Those machines, which cost about $20 million, were shelved at Brunner’s request and the county went to a new optical scan machine that up to now had been working well. A five-year deal with ES&S cost $13.4 million.

And officials say the failure rate in an actual election is very low; about four scanner machines have to be swapped out because of a problem in most elections.

Pat McDonald, elections board deputy director, said that if ES&S can’t figure out the problem and a fix before the primary May 4, there will be a contingency plan that will include sending replacement machines to precincts.

McDonald said after the meeting that if a large number of machines freeze up, workers could bring a locked box of paper ballots from the failed machines to board headquarters and count them with**high-speed scanners.

The high-speed scanners could, if necessary, scan the ballots for the entire election, which would slow down the counting process. While the board attempts to get results out by about midnight on election night, state law requires boards of election only to have tabulation complete by the next day.

Board member Eben “Sandy” McNair said that because the votes are now marked on paper ballots, voters and others don’t have to worry that they will be lost or not counted.

With the touch-screen machines, votes were kept on memory cards that could be lost or erased. And while there was a paper trail similar to a cash register tape, it was hard to use to count votes and in some cases jammed during the election, making the trail non-existent.

While officials are concerned about the Election Day process, increasing numbers of Cuyahoga County residents have been choosing to vote absentee since the law changed allowing anyone to vote that way.

In the 2009 May primary, more votes were cast in Cuyahoga County through absentee ballots than at the polling locations. Fifty nine percent of the 72,447 votes cast, or 42,582, came in through absentee ballots.

So far this year, 174,594 voters have requested an absentee ballot for the May primary.