Computer May Have Lost 4,500 N.C. Votes

[maddezmom]

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - More than 4,500 votes may be lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Scattered other problems may change results in local races around the state.


Officials are investigating whether the lost votes in coastal Carteret County can be retrieved somehow, said state Board of Elections Executive Director Gary Bartlett.


Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.


Expecting the greater capacity, the county used only one unit during the early voting period. "If we had known, we would have had the units to handle the votes," said Sue Verdon, secretary of the county election board.

more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&ncid=536&e=10&u=/ap/20041104/ap_on_el_pr/voting_problems

not that it'll matter now, but maybe for next time. :shrug:

[htuttle]

1. And the machine was unable to warn 'no space available for votes'?

Are these pieces of shit written in Visual Basic now, or what?

[hedda_foil]

6. basically.

That's a fair description.

[daleo]

2. There will be some token efforts to find "lost votes"

They will make sure that it is 50:50, or even extra Bush votes "found". Then, the claim can be made that the election was all aboveboard, and the few inevitable errors did not influence the result.

Just a whitewash for the sake of public relations.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Send this info to CNN so they can stop reporting that electonic

balloting had no problems.

[wjsander]

4. How much fucking information could one ballot have?

These days you can store a gig of data on a keychain and yet computers used for the election can only hold 3,000 votes?!

[Sara Beverley]

5. Gosh, those "private sector companies" just can't be expected to

perform at certain standards, can they? But of course, it will be blamed on the Federal or state or local workers. Must be a subsidiary of Hallibuton.

[maddezmom]

7. interesting article on Unielect:

Voting system phased out after Tuesday

By David Panian -- Daily Telegram Staff Writer

TECUMSEH -- Nine years of voting by fingertip in Tecumseh will likely come to an end on Tuesday.

Since 1995, voters in Tecumseh have used the Patriot Voting System, a touchscreen system made by UniLect of Dublin, Calif., to cast their ballots. While in other states there has been much criticism of touchscreen systems made by other companies, no one has said a word about UniLect's product.

"We've never had anyone question our ballots," City Clerk Laura Caterina said. "Most of our voters love this system. Our voters are used to it by now, and we educate our newcomers at every election."


Telegram photo by David Panian -- Voters in the city of Tecumseh have used a touchscreen system to record their votes since 1995. The liquid crystal display lies flat in the voting booth.




more: http://www.lenconnect.com/articles/2004/11/01/news/news01.txt

Until today....

[maddezmom]

8. UniLect admits to the error and the 4,530 votes are LOST

The Unilect technical people now admit that they were in error and that the accumulation and storing capacity is only 3,005 total votes, and that the additional votes of 4,530 are lost," said Pond, who read directly from an e-mail sent to the state Board of Elections about the problem.

However, election officials said they do not believe the lost votes affect the county races for Board of Commissioners.

http://www.jdnews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=26980&Section=News

[llmart]

9. And where else were these machines used?

I think there's more of this than we'll ever know.

[maxsmom]

10. you need to look at this too

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/

[maddezmom]

11. the new axis of evil: Diebold, ShoicePoint and Sproul

NEW YORK, Nov. 3 /BSNewswire/ -- Diebold, ChoicePoint and Sproul - in a new partnership between government and business involving unprecedented interagency cooperation between the RNC/PNAC, the Patent Office, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security - and funded in part by venture capital from Microsoft's capital-markets division - have announced plans to form a joint venture to leverage core software patents and other intellectual property for the purpose of maintaining America's strategic edge at providing "the best democracy money can buy."


Is this an "Onion" piece?

[countmyvote4real]

13. That's a great read. Thanks, maxsmom, for the link. n/t

[maddezmom]

15. here's a recent article on Sproul...he is an evil man

AP NEWS FEEDS
November 2, 2004

(AP) GOP Operative Under Fire Over Tactics
By BETH DeFALCO
Associated Press Writer
PHOENIX

GOP operative Nathan Sproul makes no apologies for sending his canvassers out to register Republicans, not Democrats, in battleground states. And if powerful Democrats like Ted Kennedy are demanding the Justice Department investigate him, well, he considers that a badge of honor.

"I take great pride in the fact that the Democrats are having hysterical fits about how well we did our job," Sproul said.

Sproul and his Chandler, Ariz.-based political consulting firm, Sproul & Associates, have come under fire in recent weeks, accused of deceiving would-be voters and destroying Democratic voter registration cards.

Some of his former canvassers have come forward in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Oregon, alleging they were told to register only Republicans and to "walk away" from people who said they intended to vote for John Kerry. Some said that completed Democratic registration forms had been thrown out or ripped up.

more: http://www.mndaily.com/AP_article.php?ID=<[e-mail]

[maddezmom]

16. and one on ChoicePoint

~snip~
Under her and Jeb Bush's leadership, Florida had done the unprecedented. It hired a private firm, DBT/Choicepoint, to compile initial, "raw" voter purge lists to be used in all state elections. They received $2, 317,800, vs. the $5,700 the previous company had been paid, which was the first private contractor for such sensitive work ever sought by any state. The relationship resulted from a corrupted Miami mayoral election in 1997, when many dead returned to vote. The Republican leadership of Florida struck upon this ingenious solution, to pay so much to a big company that assured the thoroughness of their many database cross checking procedures. (As it turns out, they did none of that well-compensated checkin' and the state knew it.) On the board of this company and among their consultants are several "Republican sugar daddies," including Giuliani's top financial guru for his senatorial run.

~snip~
http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/article.php/16771

[yardwork]

12. Vote this yahoo article a "5"

It's being freeped.

[maddezmom]

14. did earlier...don't think anyone cares anymore

:(
You have given the news article Computer Loses 4,500 Votes in N.C. a rating of 5.
Its current average rating is 3.57 with 724 vote(s).

[Supersedeas]

17. the list of lost votes just gets longer and longer-faulty flawed democracy

[Media_Lies_Daily]

18. Can't find what doesn't exist in your machines, can you?

[struggle4progress]

19. This b*shit won't end spontaneously. It's going to be a long hard fight.