With Diebold,you tweak to 'get the reports you need'?Odd news article-

[Algorem]

Touch screens' electoral debut in Medina not without glitches

(must have slipped by Propagandist Daily's propaganda-rewrite office?Or maybe they added the last paragraph.)

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/medina/113170573037600.xml&coll=2

Friday, November 11, 2005
Terry Oblander
Plain Dealer Reporter

Medina- ...

Medina County Elections Director Sue Strasser said poll workers failed to deliver computer memory cards for six voting machines to the main office. But even without the complete vote counts, returns were being reported as final results... (?)

The incomplete results could be reported as complete because the computer program that made that determination was based on polling places, not on the number of precincts. (?)

David Baer, a spokesman for Diebold Elections Systems, maker of the touch-screen machines, said that they can report results in a number of ways and that first-time users of the systems - such as Medina County - often find they need to tweak the reporting programs to get the kinds of reports they need. (?)

The final voting numbers reported Wednesday by the board did not change the outcomes of any elections. Winners remained winners, and issues that passed or failed stayed that way. (?)

[mod mom]

1. UFB! Sent to Countdown as well as my election Reform buddies!

[mod mom]

2. Can we get this story on the GREATEST page?

[mod mom]

3. I also sent it to a Dem Staff House Judiciary Legal Aide.

[Land Shark]

4. I wrote to the reporter and here's part of the response:

========
REPORTER OBLANDER'S EMAIL TO ME:

I was told by the elections director that six memory cards were not delivered to the boards from precincts -- one from Wadsworth, one from York Township Hall and four from a polling place in a Brunswick School. The board learned this because the computer keeping track of memory cards flagged them as missing . Final results weren't reported until nearly 1 a.m. apparently too late for any newspaper and too late for the board to even update its own Internet postings.

The board was reporting 99.33 % complete results more than 2 hours earlier --- 10 or 10:30 p.m., I think. We would later learn that only 80 or 85 percent of the votes were counted at that time.

The elections director says this was the fault of a reporting program that determined the percentage of votes counted based on polling places counted, not precincts. She called it a California style of vote reporting.

The Diebold guy I talked to said that was possible that there are many ways to configure voting results. It's the local boards that make that choice, she said.
=====

COMMENT: THE PROGRAM IS FLEXIBLE ENOUGH TO DISPLAY INACCURATE DATA, WHEN THE PROGRAM SUPPOSEDLY "KNOWS" THAT THE MEMORY CARDS ARE MISSING, ACCORDING TO THE TEXT ABOVE

[mod mom]

5. thanks for posting this. Please also post on ER list servs. I posted

the article earlier. I wish we could get this on the Greatest Page.