(ES&S) Voting System Adds Nearly 5,000 Ballots to Tally

[Wilms]

Voting System Adds Nearly 5,000 Ballots to Tally

By Kim Zetter

June 5, 2009

A software glitch in an optical-scan voting system added nearly 5,000 ballots to the tally of a South Dakota election this week. The error was discovered only after the election results were called, according to the Rapid City Journal.

The problem occurred when officials combined tallies from optical-scan machines in three precincts in Rapid City in Pennington County. The tabulation software used to combine the totals added 4,875 phantom ballots to the count. The system indicated 10,488 ballots were cast when, in reality, only 5,613 ballots existed, indicating that the glitch wasn’t simply a matter of doubling the votes.

Oddly, (or predictably - Wilms) no one caught the problem during the initial count. City election officials hadn’t bothered to keep a manual tally of the number of ballots cast as voters handed them in and they were scanned into the machines — a procedure designed to catch exactly such a discrepancy. It was only after someone began to question the high voter turnout for the small election, that officials went back to count the ballots.

~snip~

No one in the county election office was available to speak about the issue when Threat Level called.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/voting-machine-adds-nearly-5000-ballots-to-tally/