USA Today: Federal agency finds defects in ballot scanners

[mod mom]

Federal agency finds defects in ballot scanners
By Gregory Korte, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – The federal agency responsible for inspecting voting equipment said Thursday that a ballot scanner used in several key battleground states can freeze up without warning, fail to log errors and misread ballots.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission said the ballot reader, made by Omaha-based ES&S, is not in compliance with federal standards. And while it's the first time the 8-year-old agency has taken such a step, it falls just short of decertification — a move that could force election officials to abandon the machines on the eve of the 2012 presidential primaries.

The DS200 optical-scan system is designed to read paper ballots fed into the machines by voters themselves at their precincts. It's used in all or part of Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York and Wisconsin.

The commission found three problems with the machines:

•Random screen-freezes that prevent ballots from being fed.
•Failure to log errors in a file that would let election officials know of problems.
•Skewing of ballots as they're fed into the machine, making votes cast in some parts of the ballot unreadable.

-snip

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2011-12-22/defective-voting-machines/52172034/1?mid=55


and from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Cleveland voting machines miss votes, freeze up
12/23/11 at 12:51pm Written by cweiser


The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that scanners Cuyahoga County has used to tally election results since 2008 are defective.

They miss votes and freeze up, according to a federal report. The PD writes:

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.

-snip
http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/23/cleveland-voting-machines-miss-votes-freeze-up/


BIG surprise, right? You'll love the GOP address to the problem (from USA Today):

"House Republicans have moved to kill the EAC, calling it a "zombie agency."

:mad:

[Kurovski]

1. K&R

Oh now, all machines have their little glitches.






















When properly designed.

[mod mom]

2. Note it came out in a milk toast publication at a time when no one is paying attention.

I'm sure it wasn't intentional! :eyes:

[bvar22]

3. Surprise, surprise.

Privately Owned Voting, Tabulating, and Reporting Computers with secret proprietary programing
should NEVER be allowed ANYWHERE.

There are now MORE of these machines in operation today than when the Democrats assumed power in Congress in 2006.

Not a peep from the leadership of either party,
because elections are too important to leave up to the people.

[Enthusiast]

4. Fake democracy.

Banana republic.

[dflprincess]

5. We use scanners in Minnesota - at least they have a paper trail

or Al Franken wouldn't be a senator today. We also had a recount in the 2010 governor's race which, fortunately, did not drag on like the senate recount. Mark Dayton, who had won the first count by a few hundred votes picked up even during the recount.

It makes one wonder if, whoever programed those machines, screwed up as both those races fell within the range that requires an automatic recount. I used to worry less about elections in Minnesota because of the paper backup, I no longer feel so good about them.