Update: E-voting problems reported early in battleground states Issues arose in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia Elizabeth Montalbano
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=IT+in+Government&articleId=9118983&taxonomyId=69&pageNumber=1 November 4, 2008 (IDG News Service) Tuesday could be a long day for election officials in states relying on electronic-voting machines to record votes in the U.S. presidential election, if early reports of malfunctions are any indication. Problems with e-voting machines were reported early on Election Day in several U.S. states, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia, which are identified as battleground states where the outcome of the vote could tip the presidential race in favor of either Democratic Sen. Barack Obama or Republican Sen. John McCain. According to voter reports on the ground and from watchdog organizations, there were problems with getting e-voting machines up and running in these key states and others, and in some cases the machines would crash during the voting process and had to be rebooted. Pennsylvania and Virginia were among states that Verified Voting, an advocacy group focused on improving voting systems, and other watchdog organizations said they would keep a close eye on for problems. Neither state had early voting before Nov. 4, nor do they require paper-trail backups with the touch-screen e-voting machines in place at polls. Critics of e-voting said that without a paper trail, there's no way to audit the results of a touch-screen machine, often called DREs, or direct recording electronic machines. Some polling locations can give voters so-called emergency paper ballots, but this is not the case in all locations, said Pamela Smith, executive director of Verified Voting, in an interview early Tuesday. "There is no clear policy on emergency paper ballots, or on when to distribute them so voters can still vote," she said. Moreover, if there is widespread failure with machines, locations with paper ballots are "concerned they'll run out," Smith said. This, in fact, happened at one location in northern New Jersey this morning, where emergency paper ballots were gone by as early as 9:30 a.m. EST. Polling officials began making photocopies of paper ballots because people who came to vote were leaving the site, frustrated by the delay. By 10 a.m. local time, the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper in Virginia reported on its blog of voting news that it received widespread reports of e-voting problems, including trouble with the wireless communication systems of voting machines in Godwin, which the registrar there was quoted as attributing to human error. Although that issue was fixed by about 6:45 a.m., other e-voting miscues were cited by the newspaper, as well as reports of a problem with ballots jamming in the feed of a machine that reads marked ballots. Voter registration problems were also being widely reported to election watchdog groups by voters in Virginia, as well as in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Crowds swelled at polling places, and police in many locales were called to help direct traffic around voting sites. However, official reports were at odds with some of those watchdog reports during the morning. The Election Protection Coalition watchdog site had reports or problems with e-voting machines from "numerous polling locations" in Columbus, Ohio. Asked about those, Jeff Ortega, the spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, said that the office had not received reports of major problems regarding machines there. "The polls opened on time; the average longest wait is about an hour -- in many cases, it's much shorter than that," he said, adding that there were "no major problems to speak of." The Election Protection Coalition, which is fielding calls from voters, spelled out numerous e-voting problems during a late morning news conference. In Virginia, the coalition said it received more than 1,000 calls from voters reporting machines breaking down at dozens of polls and poll workers not giving paper ballots in cases where machines have failed. The coalition has dispatched a legal team to Richmond to "try to get some action," said Jon Greenbaum, the coalition's legal lead. "Some of the local election officials [in Virginia] have not been very open about really looking deeply at ... the number of machines, the number of poll workers and acting proactively," he said. "Maybe a day like today will make them more proactive. Sometimes election officials wait until the meltdown in their states. Sometimes you have to have the finger pointed at you to take some action." In addition, the coalition has gotten reports from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh about broken machines and voters being forced to cast provisional ballots, Voters in Florida have reported "major" problems with optical scanning machines, particularly in Hillsborough County, the coalition said. More than 1,400 voters have called in with e-voting complaints in Florida, he added. Voters in Michigan were reporting machines malfunctioning, resulting in long lines and in some cases poll workers administering polls through paper ballots. Other callers reported that machine operators and poll workers were not equipped to resolve polling machine malfunctions, according to the coalition is Our Vote Live site, where it is logging problems that are being reported. Michigan officials have not returned a call seeking comment. In a separate incident today in Princeton, N.J., one voter said he's not sure that he didn't accidentally vote twice due to an error by a pollworker. The Rev. Robert Moore, the executive director of the Princeton-based Coalition for Peace whose group is leading a legal challenge in New Jersey over its use of e-voting machines, said he may have changed the vote of the person who used the voting machine just before him, due to a mistake by a poll worker. Moore, in a telephone interview, said he was the 216th voter at his Princeton voting place today. He went through a curtain and on the electronic screen was a message thanking the previous voter for having voted. Moore said he put an "X" by his choice for president, and then was informed by a clerk outside his voting booth that his voting machine had not been reset. "And then, suddenly, the 'X' went away," Moore. "I'm not totally sure what the machine did." Moore said a new screen appeared and put another X for president and completed his voting. But he isn't certain what happened and wonders if he changed the vote of the person who used that electronic machine prior to him. Moore said there's no way to check without paper backup. "The point is we just aren't sure what the machine has done when there is no verified paper ballot that is part of the voting process," he said, adding that the problem only reinforced his doubts about how e-voting. Moore wants to see a paper backup system that could be used to validate voting accuracy. The group is also concerned about tampering, a possibility that was backed up a report last month by researchers at Princeton University, concluded that there were dangerous insecurities in the machines and that they could be hacked. Moore said he has been aware of e-voting machines stored at a local public school that could have been accessible prior to the election by someone with ill intent. However, the Associated Press reported that there were problems when a "handful" of machines malfunctioned in Fairfield County, which is southeast of Columbus, while the wrong paper ballots were sent to two precincts, according to Debbie Henderly, the elections director there. In Philadelphia, someone who answered the phone in the deputy city commissioner's office said there were "no more problems than usual" with e-voting machines in that area, though there was one in which there were numerous reports of machine malfunctions. A direct call to the office of Deputy City Commissioner Fred Voigt was not returned Tuesday morning. Illinois was another state where voters were reporting problems with machines, Verified Voting's Smith said. However, Illinois is not considered a battleground state, as it is the home state of Obama, and he is widely projected by pollsters to win the election there. The race between the two candidates is closer in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia, according to polls taken before election day. Heather Havenstein and Patrick Thibodeau, of Computerworld, and Nancy Weil and Marc Ferranti, of the IDG News Service, contributed to this report. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
